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Equinix’s Planned 1 Million-Square-Foot Ashburn Data Center Campus

Equinix projected more than one million square feet across five planned North Ashburn facilities in 2015. Later records document openings, but not the plan’s final completion or total area.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read
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Equinix’s October 2015 announcement described a plan—not a completed campus—for five data-center facilities in North Ashburn expected to provide more than one million square feet of new space at completion. Later company announcements document construction activity and operating Ashburn facilities, but the available records do not establish that all five originally planned buildings were completed or confirm the campus’s final total area.

What Equinix announced for North Ashburn

On October 14, 2015, Equinix said its planned North Ashburn campus would eventually make way for five facilities expected to total more than one million square feet of new space. The figure was a forward-looking estimate for the completed plan, not a report of space already built. Equinix described the site as close to its existing data-center campus in Ashburn.

The announcement’s scale claim belongs to Equinix: the company called the project one of the largest builds in Loudoun County’s data-center corridor. It was not an independent estimate of the campus’s eventual size. (Equinix announcement, October 14, 2015.)

What happened after the announcement

Groundbreaking and land purchase

In a March 2, 2017 release, Equinix said it had announced the North Ashburn groundbreaking in October 2015. The 2017 release also reported the purchase of four parcels near its existing Ashburn campus, spanning 34.5 acres, for $34.5 million. Those land-purchase figures describe the 2017 transaction; they do not establish the final area or completion status of the five-facility plan. (Equinix, March 2, 2017.)

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DC12 opened in phases

Equinix announced the opening of DC12’s first phase on October 26, 2017. The company said that phase added 1,500 cabinets and more than 57,800 gross square feet. Equinix’s current DC12 page lists the facility at 44790 Performance Circle, Ashburn, and gives its space as 114,323 square feet. These are different measures from the 2015 plan’s projected total of new space, so they should not be treated as interchangeable or simply added together. (DC12 facility page; DC12 opening announcement.)

Further Washington-area openings

Equinix’s November 2020 announcement documented additional Washington-area expansion. It said DC21’s first phase provided more than 41,000 square feet of colocation space and an initial 925 cabinets. The same release said DC15’s first phase had opened in the second quarter of 2020, with approximately 23,000 square feet and 1,600 cabinet equivalents. The announcement provides evidence of continued regional expansion, but does not by itself show that DC21 or DC15 belonged to the original North Ashburn five-building plan. (Equinix, November 17, 2020.)

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How large is the operating Ashburn footprint?

Equinix’s current facility pages list DC11 at 21721 Filigree Court, Ashburn, with 116,831 square feet, and DC12 at 44790 Performance Circle, Ashburn, with 114,323 square feet. These are present-day facility-page specifications, not a reconciled final total for the 2015 five-facility campus plan. Nor should they be directly compared with the original forecast without accounting for the different area measures used in the announcements. (DC11 facility page; DC12 facility page.)

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Is the million-square-foot campus already built?

The records establish that Equinix reported a groundbreaking in 2015, that DC12’s first phase opened in 2017, and that the company later reported other Washington-area facility openings. They do not establish whether all five North Ashburn facilities named in the 2015 plan were completed or what the final combined area of that specific plan is. The million-square-foot figure should therefore be described as the announced expectation, not as verified completed capacity.

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