Port Washington’s 1,900-acre data center will include four buildings in the first phase

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After months of buying land and negotiating development deals, design details for a 2.5 million-square-foot data center have come forward in Port Washington.

Since January, the city of Port Washington has taken steps to acquire 1,900 acres for a massive data center campus with developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Denver-based Vantage Data Centers started buying land west of Interstate 43 in preparation for a project with more than a billion dollars in anticipated investment and at least one gigawatt of electricity usage.

The project calls for four data center buildings with roughly 2.5 million square feet, an agenda from the Port Washington Design Review Board showed. The data center buildings and supporting facilities will be located on around 672 acres of land north of Highland Drive, south of Lake Drive, east of the Ozaukee Interurban Trail and west of I-43.

The Port Washington Design Review Board was scheduled for Aug. 12 to review building, site and operations plans from VDC Wisco Realty Investments 1 LLC. The company shares an address with a Vantage Data Centers location in Santa Clara, Calif., state records showed.

The first phase will include four data center buildings, with two buildings around 560,000 square feet each and the remaining two buildings around 719,000 square feet, plans showed.

Each data center building will be supported by a dedicated parking lot with up to 200 stalls, generators, transformers, utility buildings and dry coolers.

There will be a 6,500-square-foot visitor center at the primary entrance and a 50,000-square-foot warehouse. Data centers and support buildings will be around 35 feet tall and dry cooler platforms will stand around 55 feet. All tech buildings have a uniform design with precast concrete panels.

Plans showed that Corgan, a firm based in Dallas, is the architect of record.

Vantage Data Centers wants to obtain around 1.3 gigawatts by the end of 2027 according to WEC Energy Group, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported.

The land is zoned for an I-3 Technology Campus District which allows use such as data centers, utility facilities and light industrial warehousing related to tech, city officials said. It’s not clear yet who the end user will be for the Port Washington data center.

The city reviewed an agreement with Vantage for $650,000 each year in new tax revenue starting in 2027. The city estimated the project land will be worth $120 million.

As part of the agreement, Vantage would pay upfront costs for $175 million in infrastructure improvements including expanded capacity for water and wastewater treatment facilities, upgraded water mains and sewer lines, power infrastructure and a new water tower. The city would reimburse Vantage with a 20-year tax increment district.

Port Washington officials will meet Aug. 19 to vote on the agreement.

Over the summer, Vantage bought land west of I-43 ahead of data center development. The land was mostly farmland or single-family homes.

Prior to those purchases, the city annexed 1,900 acres from the village of Port Washington and partnered with Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a data center preparation firm. Having the land under control made it easier for infrastructure improvements and changes to the zoning code, officials noted.

In May, some residents raised questions about how the data center would affect residents living nearby, the environment and new power generation, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The Port Washington Common Council voted unanimously to move ahead with annexing land.

Vantage Data Centers has 36 campuses across five continents in its portfolio. Around 14 data centers are in North America.