Starwood to Convert Former NFL Facility Into More Data Centers

Even former NFL training grounds aren’t safe from Northern Virginia’s data center tsunami.

Starwood Capital Group is aiming to transform an 8-acre campus in Herndon — a place once used by the Washington Commanders in the 1970s and `80s — into two data center facilities spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet. Starwood purchased the property, which includes two athletic fields and a church building on a road named after the NFL franchise’s previous name, from Word of Grace Christian Church for $25 million in 2023. 

Starwood’s plans for the Word of Grace Data Centers include two facilities dubbed Building E and Building F, with the former spanning 406,000 square feet. The expected square footage of Building F was not available, according to The Real Deal, which first reported the news. The names of the buildings imply that the project is an extension of Starwood’s Renaissance Technology Park, a roughly 60-acre data center campus adjacent to the Word of Grace site that is set to house four Amazon-leased facilities.

The Word of Grace site is also about one block north of Western High School, Fairfax County Public Schools’ latest, $150 million school district addition that’s expected to begin classes in 2026. 

A representative for Starwood did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Renaissance Technology Park is currently entitled for 2.1 million square feet of data center development, making it the largest data center campus in Fairfax County. Despite, or perhaps because of, its abundance of data center projects in the region, Amazon’s plans regarding the Word of Grace facilities were not immediately clear. A representative for Amazon Web Services also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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