Chesterfield County Data Center That Hosts the Virginia Information Technologies Agency Was Sold For $44 Million

With work on one of the region’s largest data centers underway in Henrico County, a smaller facility on the southern end of metro Richmond has changed hands in an eight-figure deal.

The two-story, 193,000-square-foot data center at 11751 Meadowville Road in Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park sold last month for $44 million, according to county records.

An entity tied to New York-based Global Securitization Services was the buyer. The seller was Maryland-based COPT Data Center Solutions, which purchased the 28-acre site from the county’s Economic Development Authority in 2006 for $440,000 and opened the data center a year later. The property most recently was assessed at $39.4 million.

Neither Global Securitization Services nor COPT Data Center Solutions could be reached for comment Friday.

The facility serves two primary clients: Northrop Grumman IT and the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, which oversees the state’s technology infrastructure.

The agency, which is also headquartered at the Chester site, is in the midst of a $300 million lawsuit it filed against Northrop Grumman, alleging the company performed poorly as an IT contractor, according to documents filed last summer in Richmond Circuit Court.

Northrop Grumman has filed a counterclaim for $10 million alleging a breach of contract for several projects that were ongoing.

Global Securitization, founded in 1996, is a financial data firm that “specializes in the ownership and administration of special purpose entities established in connection with structured finance transactions,” according to its website.

The firm’s website said its clients include domestic and international banks, insurance companies, independent finance companies, investment funds, private equity funds and industrial corporations.

Global Securitization’s transaction is at least the second deal this year involving an of out-of-state investor purchasing a data facility in the region.

Earlier this year, New York-based Longships Capital, along with Homeward Angel and Prudent Richmond, purchased the five-building Bank of America Operations Center at 8011 Villa Park Drive in Henrico County for $38 million.

Work also is ramping up on Facebook’s new $1 billion data center in eastern Henrico, which has secured DPR Construction as its general contractor.

Source: Richmond BizSense