Company working with NorthPoint Development, which has multiple projects in Pennsylvania
Real estate investment firm BentallGreenOak (BGO) has secured more than $250 million for data center development in the US.
The company this week announced the successful close of its data center co-investment fundraise, totaling approximately $260m, which was established in connection with its US Industrial Strategies I fund.
BGO partner NorthPoint has severla data center projects in the works around Pennsylvania - Google Maps
Combined with this co-investment, the inaugural fundraise for the firm's closed-end strategy totaled approximately $800m. The fund has now reached final close.
BGO said it is now in the advanced stages of securing up to 800MW of power capacity in aggregate to enable the construction of up to 3.2 million sq ft (297,289 sqm) of data center space. Further details weren't shared.
The US Industrial Strategies I fund secured commitments from nine domestic institutional investors, comprising a mix of pension funds, insurance groups, and high-net-worth capital. The data center co-investment attracted nine additional investors.
This first fund of BGO's US Industrial Strategies features a portfolio of eight industrial projects, developed in collaboration with NorthPoint Development, which includes three sites planned for data center development.
The portfolio now spans more than 1,500 acres across the US, with 17.1 million sq ft (1.58 million sqm) of buildable area, including capacity for data centers. BGO said that of this, 6.4 million sq ft (594,579 sqm) has already been built, with 5 million sq ft (464,515 sqm) leased to a diverse mix of institutional-grade tenants.
"What we've been able to achieve to date through Industrial Strategies I reflects growing investor conviction in BGO's ability to deliver the next generation of state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, and state-of-the-art, power-hungry logistics facilities," said John Carrafiell, co-CEO of BGO. "By combining institutional real estate expertise with deep utility-grade energy insight, we're creating three shovel-ready powered sites with access to critical infrastructure -- substations, transmission lines, and fiber networks. In today's power-constrained environment, our data science-driven approach enables us to identify and deliver precisely what hyperscale users need -- at scale, speed, and certainty."
BGO is a global real estate investment management advisor with some $86bn in assets under management. The firm is part of SLC Management, the institutional alternatives and traditional asset management business of Sun Life.
The company is an investor in Nordic data center firm Bulk, and previously acquired two IBM data centers in Canada from the company in a sale-leaseback deal. BGO recently launched its own data center platform, BGO DataCenters, which claimed a European pipeline exceeding 1.2GW of capacity, focused on Tier 1 and 2 markets.
NorthPoint Development is a Kansas City-based commercial real estate operating company focused on residential and industrial developments. The company has plans to develop an extensive data center business, saying it has 37 powered land sites across 17 states, totaling more than 15,600 acres and 4.8GW of potential capacity.
The company has filed to develop several projects around Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, Hazle Township, and Packer Township.
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