Aligned Data Centers will acquire land, power and water at Quantum Loophole’s Frederick County, Maryland campus – about 20 miles from the centre of Ashburn, Virginia, and 45 miles from ITW here in National Harbor.
Aligned will also have access to Quantum Loophole’s QLoop, a fibre network that directly connects the campus with Loudoun County, Virginia.
“Aligned Data Centers is one of the first to recognise this opportunity for their future development needs,” said Snowhorn, the former Terremark and CyrusOne executive, who announced plans for the campus last year.
The site has more than 2,100 acres of land, and will provide power, recycled water and connectivity on site.
Aligned will be the first of many, Snowhorn said. “Our sales funnel is bursting with interest. Now is the time for companies to make their commitments to ensure their future data centre developments are in the right location, with the right infrastructure, and the right incentives to make it accessible.”
In one of his first interviews about the project, Snowhorn told Capacity last year that it would create “highly sustainable, environmentally sound data centre developments at scale”.
Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned, said: “The attractive tax exemptions, power availability, proximity to Northern Virginia, and holistic approach to enabling data centre development were key drivers in our decision to choose Frederick County.”
He said the “expansion comes on the heels of Aligned’s ORD-01 data centre launch and the groundbreaking of ORD-02 in Chicago”.
Schaap announced the two Chicago projects last month.
He said Aligned plans “[in excess of] 400MW of additional capacity… in the northern Virginia region alone”.
Quantum Loophole said Aligned will gain “first mover advantage” on Maryland’s tax breaks.
Hear more from Josh Snowhorn in edition three of the ITW Daily, out Thursday
