U.S. data‑center construction digest
This week’s U.S. data center activity underscores a market increasingly defined by power availability, permitting friction, and AI-driven scale. Major land positions, giga-scale campus concepts, and local pushback all point to a development cycle where securing power and community alignment now dictates project viability as much as demand.
| Developer / Project name | Location & scale | Investment & timeline | Project status | Notes |
| SoftBank / PORTS Technology Campus | Pike County, Ohio; former DOE Portsmouth site; proposed 10GW data center campus with associated power buildout | DOE said construction is expected to begin this year; SoftBank-linked power investment includes $33.3bn for 9.2GW of gas generation, plus $4.2bn with AEP Ohio for transmission upgrades; Bloomberg reported the data center portion could total $30bn–$40bn | Planning | One of the biggest signals yet that AI-scale development is moving toward fully integrated power-and-compute campuses. The big issue is not entitlement alone but whether gas generation and transmission can be delivered at the required speed and scale. |
| TeraWulf / Lake Mariner CB4 | Somerset, New York; CB4 is a 168MW building within a campus currently at 500MW, expandable to 750MW | CB4 energization expected Q3 2026; CB3, CB4, CB5, and CB2 phase two are also expected to energize this year | Under development / construction | This is a real construction milestone, not just a filing. It also shows former crypto-oriented campuses continuing to pivot into AI/HPC infrastructure where large existing power positions already exist. |
| Revitalization Unlimited / former Western Newspaper Union site | Kansas City, Missouri; proposed 20-story, 30MW urban data center; about 142,085 sq ft per earlier city filing | No capex disclosed; still at concept/proposal stage | Planning | Urban, vertical data center proposals remain unusual in the U.S. This one stands out because it implies a non-campus, downtown redevelopment model, which could face different permitting, utility, and political dynamics than suburban greenfield sites. |
| Google affiliate / Project Kestrel land acquisition | Kansas City, Missouri; affiliate bought 430 acres near KCI; tied to broader Google buildout in the market | No investment figure disclosed for the new tract; DCD noted nearby Project Micah began construction in February on a 500-acre site planned for five data centers, 1.56m sq ft, and 700MW | Planning | This is a land-positioning move rather than a construction start, but it matters because it expands Google’s optionality in a market where it already has confirmed campus development underway. It is another signal that Kansas City is moving beyond secondary-market status for hyperscale growth. |
| Unidentified developer / Regency site | Ashburn, Virginia; potential 130-acre campus with six buildings at 72MW each, totaling 432MW | No capex disclosed; DCD reported power would likely not arrive until the mid-2030s | Planning | The headline here is the power timeline. Even in Data Center Alley, project optionality is increasingly being constrained by when power can actually show up, not just whether land can be assembled or rezoned. |
| Crow Holdings / Fayetteville project withdrawal | Fayetteville, Georgia; proposed data center north of Fayette Pavilion along Highway 85 North | No investment figure disclosed; appeal withdrawn before city council hearing | Halted | This is a clean example of local process risk killing momentum even where zoning had already allowed data center use. It reinforces that site-plan and political approval risk remains very real in community-sensitive submarkets. |
| QTS / Salem Township campus | Salem Township, Pennsylvania; 1,700+ acres near Talen’s Susquehanna nuclear plant; reports suggest 12–17 buildings possible | QTS acquired the land for more than $500m; DCD reported construction could start later this year | Planning | This is one of the week’s most important land banking moves because it sits near major existing and planned power-linked digital infrastructure. The adjacency to nuclear-backed infrastructure is exactly the kind of power logic now shaping new AI campus geography. |
| Joliet Technology Center / Hillwood + PowerHouse | Joliet, Illinois; City approved conditional annexation of about 795 acres for a proposed data center campus | City said the project could generate about $310m in property taxes over 30 years and includes a developer commitment of up to $100m for city improvements; local reporting said the plan could include 24 buildings and up to 1.8GW at full buildout | Planning | This is a major entitlement step for what local officials called a transformative project, but it also came after intense public backlash and extended hearings. It is a good example of how large campuses are still getting through, but only with heavier community-benefit packaging and political scrutiny. |
| AWS / San Antonio filings (COPT Potranco and Bitter Blue) | San Antonio, Texas; one project at 141,979 sq ft and another at nearly 120,000 sq ft, both two-story computer center buildings | Combined disclosed investment about $90m; COPT Potranco: $25m, start Oct. 2026, finish Nov. 2027; Bitter Blue: $65m, construction expected to begin March 2026, complete Feb. 2029 | Planning | San Antonio keeps showing up as a serious secondary Texas market. One takeaway is that AWS and its landlord ecosystem are continuing to seed multiple smaller building programs rather than only giant headline campuses. |
| Project Azalea / Project Turbo LLC-linked campus | Thomson, McDuffie County, Georgia; approved 200-acre, six-building, 400MW campus | Local officials estimated $1bn in value; could be completed by 2029; project will include its own substation and backup generators | Planning | The approval came with a big caveat: the regional planning report said sufficient energy supply is not currently available and that upgrade studies are ongoing. That is exactly the pattern showing up across the market—approval is no longer the same thing as near-term deliverability. |
| Provident Data Centers / Gateway Digital Campus and BLE Landholdings proposal | Franklin County, Missouri; one rezoning request covers about 575 acres; the other covers about 490 acres across 12 parcels | No capex disclosed; planning commission delayed decisions by one month after an 11-hour meeting | Paused | This is a pure community-opposition signal. More than 174 residents registered to speak, most against the projects, and the county pushed the decisions again. That kind of delay is not procedural noise anymore; it is now part of the standard project risk profile. |
| Mason ordinance repeal / potential future project | Mason, Michigan; no project size approved; city repealed its new data center zoning district | No capex disclosed; ordinance repealed after referendum petition; city may draft a stricter ordinance, while opponents are pushing for a half- to one-year moratorium | Paused | This is a policy action rather than a project milestone, but it materially affects development prospects in the area. The substance is clear: local governments are being forced to tighten definitions, standards, and public process before projects can move. |
Trends and observations
- Power is the gating factor almost everywhere. The clearest examples this week were the Ohio SoftBank/PORTS concept, which effectively pairs data center scale with dedicated generation and transmission investment, the Virginia Ashburn proposal whose likely power timing stretches into the mid-2030s, and Project Azalea in Georgia, where local approval was granted even though the planning record said sufficient energy supply is not yet available. That is the current market in one sentence: land and political approvals matter, but power delivery timing is increasingly the real schedule.
- Community and political pushback is no longer a fringe issue. The strongest evidence this week came from Fayetteville, where Crow Holdings effectively walked away; Franklin County, Missouri, where hearings ran 11 hours and decisions were delayed; Mason, Michigan, where a newly created zoning framework was repealed after public backlash; and Joliet, where a major approval still required a heavy package of community commitments and infrastructure concessions. The implication for developers is obvious: community strategy now needs to start as early as power and land strategy, not after.
- Onsite and integrated power strategies are moving from differentiator to baseline. The week’s most aggressive case was SoftBank’s Ohio concept, where the data center is explicitly paired with 10GW of new generation, mostly gas, plus new transmission. Even smaller or earlier-stage projects are reflecting the same logic: Project Azalea includes its own substation and backup generation, and QTS’s Pennsylvania land play is notable because it sits next to a nuclear-backed power environment. The market is telling you that “data center project” increasingly means “power project plus data center project.”
- AI-scale demand is reshaping geography and project size. The largest signals this week were the 10GW Ohio concept, the 432MW Ashburn proposal, the 400MW Azalea campus, the continuing buildout at Lake Mariner, and the continued hyperscale land accumulation around Kansas City and Pennsylvania. At the same time, AWS’s San Antonio filings show that not every growth signal comes as a single giga-campus; some hyperscalers are still advancing through multiple smaller buildings in secondary markets. Net result: both mega-campus and distributed regional expansion models are alive, but both are increasingly power-led.