Digital Realty Trust Expands Further Into NoVa

ASHBURN, VA-San Francisco-based Digital Realty Trust has acquired four contiguous parcels of land here, next to its existing data center facilities. The new parcels have the potential to increase the capacity of the campus by more than 400,000 square feet. One of the parcels includes a utility substation, totaling 34.2 acres. Digital Realty Trust did not return a call to GlobeSt.com in time for publication.

The additions to its portfolio will allow the company to develop a datacenter campus environment that has significant operating economies of scale and sufficient new inventory to meet the demands of this market,” CEO Michael F. Foust, says in a prepared statement. “We currently are tracking a significant number of datacenter requirements in the market and are on schedule to complete the construction of the next phase, a 135,000 square foot facility, in the fourth quarter of 2009.”

The new datacenter facility will ultimately support four 2250 kW Turn-Key Datacenter pods totaling 68,000 square feet of raised floor and approximately 7,500 square feet of office space.

Digital Realty Trust is among the few real estate companies that wholesale data center operations–an activity that is one of the few bright spots in commercial real estate now. These firms–as well as developers that see a new demand for such a service–are focusing on the greater DC area market for a variety of reasons, starting with demand from the federal government. Reston-based Waterford Development, for instance, has received so many inquiries from firms seeking space for data center operations that it is expecting to build a 50,000-square-foot to 60,000-square-foot data center at its Innovation@Price William Technology Park in Manassas, VA, Jan Zachariasse, president and CEO of Waterford Development told GlobeSt.com in an earlier interview.

Corporate activity, as well, is providing demand for data center service–an activity that, despite the recession, is not one that firms are able to roll back to save money. For instance, DC-based data center REIT DuPont Fabros’ ACC5 data center in Ashburn is 57% pre-leased, having recently inked agreements with two Fortune 500 companies.