Data center developer T5 Data Centers is expanding its footprint in Georgia and Chicago amid the firm’s growing focus on hyperscale megacampuses. 

Atlanta-based T5 announced plans last week for a 1.2 gigawatt data center campus in Georgia, its fourth in the state. The firm also acquired 32 acres near Chicago, adding to an assemblage on which it is building a similarly scaled megacampus.

The two projects represent the first stages of a multibillion-dollar joint venture with Canadian real estate firm QuadReal Property Group that the firm hopes will see them build gigawatt-scale campuses in markets across the U.S.

“Things are not slowing down at all,” Robbie Sovie, the firm’s executive vice president of development and construction, said to Bisnow when asked about the data center pipeline. 

In Georgia, T5’s latest proposed campus may eventually have as many as 20 data centers on-site and come with a price tag north of $16B, CEO Pete Marin told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. 

While the firm hasn’t disclosed the project’s location, a document filed by T5 last week with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs shows plans for a project called “T5ATL IV” in the Fulton County city of Fairburn southwest of Atlanta. According to the filing, T5 plans to initially build three buildings totaling 1.3M SF at the Fairburn site.  

A campus with more than a gigawatt of capacity would be T5’s largest development in Georgia by far, and it continues the firm’s expansion in its home state. T5 is building a 300-megawatt campus in Palmetto on 91 acres the firm acquired last summer along with a separate 300-megawatt campus in Lithia Springs. The company also operates a smaller facility in Alpharetta. 

In Chicago, the 32 acres T5 acquired in the North Shore community of Grayslake adds to 193 acres the firm already acquired in the town, The Real Deal reported. T5 has now spent nearly $60M in the past year acquiring land there for its proposed hyperscale campus. As in Georgia, the project has been pitched as 1.2 gigawatts of eventual capacity spread across up to 20 separate buildings.

The first phase of the Chicago campus may be delivered as soon as 2027, according to T5. 

The campus will be T5’s fourth, and largest, project in the Chicago area, a market the firm has steadily expanded in over the past two years. T5 is in the process of building a 36-megawatt facility in Northlake that was topped out last week. In March, T5 acquired a site in Elk Grove Village where the company plans to build another 36-megawatt data center, adding to the facility it already operates in the Chicago suburb. 

The planned gigawatt campuses in Chicago and Atlanta are the first of what T5 says will eventually be five similar projects launched in different U.S. markets through a joint venture with QuadReal. 

T5 and QuadReal have a long-running partnership and have previously developed data centers in Silicon Valley, Hillsboro, Chicago, Atlanta and Charlotte. The firms announced the shift toward gigawatt campuses in February, with T5’s leadership describing a Scaled Campus strategy in which massive campuses will be filled incrementally by 60-megawatt facilities. The JV plans to raise $8B specifically to support the five-campus effort. 

This push to build campuses at such a massive scale continues a period of rapid expansion for T5, which has data centers at 13 sites across the U.S. The company primarily serves hyperscale and large-scale enterprise tenants and has separate business lines focused on data center construction and operation for third parties. 

While the firm’s portfolio contains a range of data center assets ranging from multitenant facilities to campuses for cloud providers, the planned gigawatt campuses are the heart of T5’s expansion strategy, said David Mettler, T5’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The company may sporadically pursue smaller-scale development like the recently announced data center in Chicago’s Elk Grove Village, but such projects will be limited. 

“We’ll have tactical execution on special sites that we find that are available that we think will help our customers,” Mettler said. “But our bigger strategy is around the scale campuses.”

T5 is far from the only firm proposing campuses north of a gigawatt in data center hotbeds like Atlanta and Chicago amid power constraints that have pushed wait times for electricity from utilities to as long as a decade. But navigating these power constraints represents a competitive advantage for T5, Sovie said.

Sovie pointed to T5’s existing relationships with utilities and track record of successfully executing campus-scale projects in primary markets, particularly Atlanta and Chicago. When utilities are deciding which data center projects to prioritize, it’s companies with track records like T5 that are jumping toward the top of the list.

“Those are the people that the power companies are really listening to,” he said. “Some of the new entrants in the market, they’re just throwing capital and trying to structure deals … we’re hearing direct from the power companies that they’re not getting a lot of attention.”

Medline is expanding its presence at the Merchandise Mart by 110,000 square feet, making it one of the largest tenants at Vornado’s 3.7-million-square-foot property in downtown Chicago.

Medline will more than triple its offices from 51,000 to 161,000 square feet as part of a single, contiguous space across the majority of the 12th floor, committing to a long-term lease with Vornado, which will run through 2036.

Medline was represented by J. Frank Franzese and Steven Bauer of Colliers. Vornado was represented by Andrea Saewitz, Wendy Katz and Ben Cleveland of Stream Realty. Headquartered in Northfield, Illinois, Medline is a medical-surgical product manufacturer, supply chain provider and clinical solutions partner.

“With its prime location and unrivaled amenity program, THE MART aligns perfectly with Medline’s needs and continues to be a major bright spot in the Chicago office market,” said Glen Weiss, Executive Vice President, Co-Head of Real Estate at Vornado. Vornado recently completed the final phase of more than $70 million in renovations at Merchandise Mart, including second-floor amenities and gathering space.

Prologis bought a 1.4 million-square-foot industrial complex in Wilson County for $155 million. The company purchased the Beckwith Farms complex, a 94.5-acre site consisting of three industrial properties located at 12002, 12008 and 12014 Volunteer Blvd. Nuveen was the seller. Nuveen took over the unfinished property in 2013, paying $25 million for it.

The industrial park, located just off Interstate 40 East, was developed by California-based Panattoni and New York-based Clarion Partners. It is home to several tenants, including Amazon, Under Armour and Ceva Logistics.

Before its latest deal, the company reported on its website that it owns and operates 67 industrial properties and serves 217 customers in the Greater Nashville area. They currently have 17.5 million square feet of industrial real estate, with 5.7 million square feet of industrial real estate delivering over the next three years.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. said Tuesday that a top 20 pharmaceutical company and longstanding credit tenant has increased its San Diego footprint by nearly 53%. The tenant has signed a 10-year lease for 127,382 square feet, with significant expansion options, for a new R&D center at 10075 Barnes Canyon Rd. on the SD Tech by Alexandria mega campus in the Sorrento Mesa submarket of San Diego. 

With this anchor lease, the 253,079-square-foot development, which is targeting LEED Gold Core & Shell and Fitwel certifications, is now 70% leased ahead of its anticipated initial delivery in 2025. The lease also brings Alexandria’s 1.2-million-square-foot pipeline of under-construction mega campus development projects in San Diego to 94% leased.

Having entered the San Diego market in June 1994, Alexandria has been a key player in the development, expansion and transformation of the region into one of the nation’s top life science clusters. As of this past March, its operational San Diego portfolio was 95.2% occupied.

SITE Centers has spun off the Johns Creek Town Center, a 303,297-square-foot retail center in Suwanee. Big V Property Group and Equity Street Capital purchased the property.

Johns Creek Town Center is Big V’s fifth acquisition in Georgia. The North Carolina-based firm also owns community centers in Brunswick, Cornelia, Loganville and Griffin.

CommercialEdge reports that Johns Creek Town Center came online in 2000 on a 30.3-acre site. The five-building retail center features tenants from clothing, grocery and department stores, including Market by Macy’s, HomeGoods, Sprouts, Ulta Beauty, Michael’s, Sketchers and PetSmart. Downtown Atlanta is 25 miles to the southwest.

Big V says it’s a vertically integrated commercial real estate company with over 80 years of experience. The company has 56 centers in 14 states.

With Atlanta planned as a site for FIFA World Cup action in 2026, Atlanta is front and center in the soccer universe. The local Atlanta Major League Soccer team, Atlanta United, has unveiled plans to expand its training facility, highlighted by a two-story, 20,000-square foot development that will include numerous additions and improvements for player health and well-being, a state-of-the-art content production studio, and dedicated space for their academy and front office associates.

The $23 million investment will commence this summer and push total investment in the Marietta campus above $85 million. Connecting to the existing east wing of the facility, full project completion is expected by the summer of 2025, in time to host World Cup participants.

The expansion will nearly double Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground’s footprint to 50,000 square feet, in addition to more than 500,000 square feet of playing surface, inclusive of six full-length fields and two warmup areas.