QTS Realty Trust continues to advance one of the most ambitious data centre expansions at its Richmond campus in White Oak Technology Park, Henrico County in Virginia, where a 1.5 million-square-foot buildout announced in 2022 is expanding the company’s already operational mega-campus into a nearly 2.9 million-square-foot digital infrastructure hub.
The project is also part of QTS’s long-term growth strategy under Blackstone Inc. ownership. It also highlights Richmond as a growing secondary hyperscale market outside Northern Virginia’s increasingly constrained Ashburn and Loudoun corridors.
Unlike several politically contested Virginia data centre developments, including Prince William Digital Gateway data center project in Prince William County, the Henrico expansion benefits from an established operating footprint, existing utility relationships, and proximity to the Richmond Network Access Point (NAP). NAP is a strategically important interconnection hub linked to subsea cable systems landing in Virginia Beach.
The multi-phase project is expected to add up to 240MW of additional capacity across more than 200 acres. This is expected to support continued cloud and AI infrastructure demand as hyperscale operators seek lower-risk, power-accessible alternatives beyond Northern Virginia.
Construction began shortly after land acquisition in 2022 and continues under a phased delivery model.
Project Fact Sheet for QTS Richmond Expansion / White Oak Expansion
Developer: QTS Realty Trust (Blackstone-owned)
Location: White Oak Technology Park in Henrico County, Virginia
Address: Approx. 3731 Portugee Road, Henrico County, Virginia
Asset type: Hyperscale data centre campus expansion
Existing campus: 1.4 million sq ft operational campus
Expansion size: 1.5 million sq ft additional space
Total future footprint: 2.9 million sq ft combined
Planned power: Up to 240 MW
Land acquisition: Over 200 acres acquired March 2022
Land acquisition value: Approx. US$18 million
Status: Under phased development
Scope of Expansion
The expansion includes:
- 4 new data centre buildings
- each approx. 167,000 sq ft
- two-story facilities
Total server floor area scales significantly larger through stacked design and support infrastructure.
Project Team
Owner: QTS Realty Trust
Parent company: Blackstone
General contractors
Local authority
- Henrico Economic Development Authority
Power ecosystem
- Dominion Energy Virginia
1.5 Million-Square-Foot Expansion Project for QTS Data Centre in Virginia Gets Underway
Reported July 17, 2022 – 1.5 million-square-foot expansion project of the QTS data centre in Virginia’s Henrico County is officially underway. As a result, the 1.4 million square foot data centre next door will have more space.
The data centre-focused REIT with headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas, recently acquired 200 acres near its current site to enable a future expansion that might add up to 240 megawatts of capacity across 1.5 million more square feet. The site in White Oak Technology Park would effectively quadruple with the development, making it one of the biggest data centres in the entire globe.
Significance of the QTS data centre in Virginia
Due to the Richmond Network Access Point, or NAP, which connects to four high-speed transcontinental subsea cables and more than 20 other network providers, the centre is already distinctive and significant on a global scale. It was one of only 11 international internet connection points in the U.S. at the time when it first appeared three years ago.
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It connected a variety of land-based data networks with high-speed underwater data cables to Spain and Brazil. Additionally, the facility gains from an original interface with the brand-new DE-CIX Richmond situated inside QTS. This ground-breaking internet exchange, or IX, is a component of North America’s biggest carrier- and data centre-neutral interconnection network.
Commentary on the project
“Henrico and the White Oak Technology Park have been wonderful to QTS, and we will keep looking for additional investment opportunities as demonstrated by the most recent expansion of the Richmond site by more than 200 acres. We understand that the digital business sector is booming, that the data centre sector is expanding rapidly to keep up with this shift, and that we have all the resources necessary to usher in a new era of international communications.
Clint Heiden, a co-founder of the QTS Richmond NAP, on the other hand said, “We look forward to leading the charge together as we have found a terrific location to create the cornerstone of Internet infrastructure at the Richmond NAP in Henrico, Virginia.
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