Contractors working for PowerHouse Data Centres are demolishing the 43-acre former AOL headquarters in Sterling. There will be three new buildings, totalling 1.2 million sq. ft., plus a new power station on the 43-acre Northern Virginia site.
PowerHouse, a subsidiary of American Real Estate Partners, plans to establish a new “hyperscale-sized powered shell campus” at the site, the company says in a news release.
In the early days of the Internet in the 1990s, AOL was a powerful service provider. The company moved its headquarters to New York City in 2007 and later sold to Verizon for $4.4 billion in 2015.
“It’s exciting to see this underutilized site with such a historical connection to the early internet evolve to be part of the future internet,” Luke Kipfer, the vice-president of data center development and construction at American Real Estate Partners, said in a statement
The company expects demolition to be complete in early 2024. The power substation will be constructed in summer 2024 in partnership with Dominion Energy, then construction will begin on the first of the three new buildings in fall 2024 with completion expected in mid-2026, Northern Virginia Magazine reports.
AREP and investor Harrison Street purchased the site for $136 million in December 2021 from sellers Yahoo Inc. and Oath, the umbrella company that operated both Yahoo and AOL after Verizon purchased each company, The Washington Business Journal reports.
“Repurposing and transforming this site to operate at its highest and best use aligns with our sustainability commitment and positively affects how we all live, work, and play,” Kipfer said.
