Blue Owl Capital is expanding beyond Northern Virginia's "Data Center Alley" by acquiring a 71-acre development site in Culpeper, Virginia, for US$66.4 million. Blue Owl's data centre operator, Stack Infrastructure, acquired the Culpeper Technology Park at 15140 Keyser Road from RACM. This transaction equates to a value of more than US$935,000 per acre.
Greysteel brokered the sale for the seller and announced the agreement on Tuesday. The plot is located within the Culpeper Tech Zone, a county-designated data centre corridor that boasts significant power infrastructure and electrical capacity. The site is pre-approved for data centre development and offers access to multiple fibre optic networks. The zone also provides county-level tax incentives.
Strategic Expansion into Secondary Markets
Culpeper is located approximately 60 miles southwest of the centre of the world's largest data centre market. Competition for this hub has led developers and some of the country's largest investment firms to expand into Virginia's surrounding markets, particularly as land, power and fibre capacity become increasingly difficult to secure.
Zach Benlemlih, Senior Director at Greysteel, noted that Culpeper has "rapidly evolved from a speculative secondary market to an institutional target." He added that demand for developed, power-proximate land in the Mid-Atlantic region has only intensified as supply in Northern Virginia becomes scarcer. This transaction is a direct result of that trend.
Importance of Developed Sites
Greysteel has completed seven transactions in Culpeper. These included representing the seller in the original acquisition of the technology park site, as well as further data centre properties and land for industrial uses. Lacey Willard, Executive Vice President at Greysteel, explained that while primary markets are pushing out all but the most liquid buyers, well-positioned secondary sites with developed land and fibre and power access are attracting genuine institutional attention.
Meanwhile, Blue Owl is investing billions of dollars in digital infrastructure. In June, the company provided US$975 million to recapitalise a newly built and fully leased data centre in Data Center Alley.
