Data Center Developer Pays $302M for Shovel-Ready Site in NoVa

One of the DMV’s largest privately owned developers is cashing in on the skyrocketing demand for data center development in Northern Virginia..

The Peterson Companies sold a 504-acre plot of land entitled for major data center construction in Stafford County, Va., just east of Interstate 95 from Stafford Regional Airport. Denver-based data center developer Stack Infrastructure paid $302.3 million for the land, according to the Business Journals. The deal closed earlier this month.

Peterson assembled the land in deals over 2023 and 2024 that totaled $32.3 million. The developer secured entitlements for the property in September 2024, with plans to build 5.8 million square feet of data centers across 23 buildings and six substations in a project dubbed the Stafford Technology Campus, according to land development consultant Bohler. It wasn’t immediately clear why Peterson ultimately decided to sell the land rather than develop it itself. 

Stack is slightly downsizing those plans to 19 buildings, though with 1.8 gigawatts of capacity, per the Business Journals. 

“As our second major data center land development in Stafford County, this milestone highlights our focus on supporting innovative projects that drive local economic growth,” Taylor Chess, senior managing director of development at Peterson, told Commercial Observer in an email.

Representatives for Stack did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Data center development and investment is king in Northern Virginia, though most activity is centered around nearby Loudoun and Prince William counties, which together host tens of millions of square feet worth of such facilities. 

Just within the past two months, Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm BlackChamber Group announced that it had accrued $1.2 billion in construction financing to build four hyperscale data centers in the region, and Dallas-based developer and operator CyrusOne paid $154.1 million for a 10-acre data center complex in Ashburn, Va., in Loudoun County.

It’s not just data centers themselves commanding sky-high sums, either. A subsidiary of ubiquitous investment firm Blackstone (BX) this month paid $1 billion for the Potomac Energy Center, a 774-megawatt natural gas power plant just outside of Leesburg, Va. Blackstone officials said the power plant will help fuel much of the data center growth destined for the region, especially as development of AI technology matures in the coming years.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.