Real estate firm Lerner could break ground on a massive data center campus in Maryland in 2026.

The company has been planning to convert a former shopping mall site in Landover, to the east of Washington DC, for data center use.

Talking to BizJournal this week, Lerner confirmed that the company could break ground on the site as soon as 2026 or 2027.

After receiving backing from Prince George’s County Planning Board in March, Brightseat Associates LLC, an affiliate of Lerner Enterprises and The Tower Cos., gained final plan approvals this month for 4.1 million sq ft (380,900 sqm) of data centers on 87 acres at 2101 Brightseat Road.

The Brightseat Tech Park, which could see up to $5 billion invested, could offer 820MW across five data centers.

The site was previously a shopping mall that has since been demolished. It had been earmarked as one of several candidates for the FBI’s new headquarters but lost out to an 82-acre parking lot site in the city of Greenbelt owned by Boston Properties.

The decision was made in November 2023, but was met with controversy and is under investigation. A Committee on the Judiciary report from July said the decision was "flawed" and "tainted."

However, Lerner, as a potential backup if it lost out, last year filed an early-stage application with Prince George's County's land use regulatory agency for a "qualified data center” on the site.

The company then pressed ahead with alternative plans after losing out on the FBI contract and filed preliminary plans for data center development earlier this year.

Lerner Enterprises is a real estate firm owned by the family of Washington Nationals owner Theodore N. Lerner. Lerner passed away in February 2023.

The Landover Mall was built and opened by Lerner in 1972, closed in 2002, and demolished in 2006. Sears remained on a portion of the land it owned until 2014.

Lerner previously proposed building a hospital as well as an office/hotel/residential/commercial complex on the site at various times, and went as far as putting the land up for sale in 2018, touting the land as a potential data center development opportunity.

The company is also linked to a proposed data center campus project in Gainesville, Prince William County.