Vantage Data Centers chose Turner Construction Co. as the general contractor for its $2 billion data center campus in Ohio, the companies recently announced.
Vantage’s OH1 campus, east of Columbus in New Albany, Ohio, is expected to have three data centers totaling 1.5 million square feet and offering 192 MW of computing capacity at a site of 70 acres. It would be the company’s seventh North American market place.
Matt Kunz, vice president and general manager of Turner, said the project will help Vantage “meet the need for increased demand for scalable and sustainable digital infrastructure in the region.”
The first data center building is scheduled to open in 2025, followed by the other two by 2028. Vantage says the facilities were designed to achieve LEED Silver certification.
Vantage emphasizes that power for the data center campus will be provided by AEP Ohio. His project comes as the utility seeks approval from state regulators to add fees to large data centers to ensure it can cover the costs of the infrastructure needed to service a slate of data center projects in different stages of planning, design and construction in the New Albany area.
A proposal filed by AEP Ohio in October would require large data center owners to pay for at least 85 percent of the energy they say they will need each month, even if they end up using less. An alternative proposal put forward by data center owners would limit minimum payments to 75%.
This has not stopped data center owners from developing projects in the region. “Ohio is a strategic market for us and our large-scale customers,” Dana Adams, president of North America for Vantage, said in a statement. And Microsoft also recently announced plans to spend $1 billion on three data center campuses, including one in New Albany and others in the same county in Hebron and Heath.
Cloud computing and artificial intelligence have driven the demand for data centers. Primary market supply grew 26% year-on-year in 2023 to 5,174.1 MW, and an all-time high of 3,077.8 MW was under construction in primary markets, according to a report by real estate firm CBRE Group. The Columbus/New Albany market offers homeowners competitive power and land costs, according to the report.
