CBRE Investment Management is looking to expand an existing data center in Chandler, Arizona.
The application was voted unanimously to recommend approval for the project.
The company has proposed to rezone land surrounding the data center at 2500 W. Frye Road from light industrial to planned area development so as to grow the facility.
As part of the expansion, CBRE will also eliminate the existing outdated water-intensive cooling system and will add 243,000 sq ft (22,575 sqm) of data center space.
The existing data center is around 150,000 sq ft (13,935 sqm), and the entire site spans around 14.5 acres.
The new data center space will be in the form of a three-story building and will be developed on the underused parking lot. The nearby Salt River Project substation will also need to be expanded.
The new building height would be 90 feet, and is around 1,400 feet away from the nearest residence meaning that no mitigating circumstances will be needed to approve the height.
The decision to replace the existing cooling system is motivated by the high water use. The Public Works and Utilities reviewed the data center and found that in 2023 it used 14.09 million gallons.
The upgrade will see the data center rely instead on an electric air-cooling solution. The city has said it will not issue a certificate of occupancy until all water-based cooling equipment is removed.
“The only way I would have voted for this item is the fact that we got the water rights back,” said commission chairman Rick Heumann at a June 5 meeting.
“Fourteen million gallons, we’re probably going to get most of that back,” Heumann said. “Otherwise, data centers create no jobs for anybody. That’s the only reason I did support it, because we’re getting our water rights back.”
CBRE is the owner of the project, with Gensler handling the design. Planning is being done by Kimley-Horn & Associates Inc.
The data center was originally part of a campus that was purchased by Bank of America in 2008. More than a decade later, the bank decided to split the campus up and sell the data center portion.
In December 2022, Chandler changed its zoning code to limit data center developments in the city. Data centers now need to be zoned as "planned area development" to be developed, and nearby neighborhoods must be notified, as well as noise mitigation measures put in place.
Other operators with data centers in Chandler include CyrusOne, Digital Realty, H5 Data Centers, and INAP.
