Brain's new firm teams with Black & Veatch on $1.6B data center campus

By Rob Roberts  – Reporter, Kansas City Business Journal
May 2, 2018, 12:57pm CDT Updated May 2, 2018, 3:03pm

Enfinite Capital and Diode Ventures, a Black & Veatch company, have been selected to finance, operate and maintain a $1.6 billion data center campus being developed in northern Virginia by Alberta, Canada-based PointOne Development Corp.

In announcing his creation of a new firm to help deliver turnkey green-energy and other business solutions last January, David Brain noted that Enfinite Capital LLC might be better poised for success than the public company he co-founded 20 years ago.

That was a bold claim given the current $4.1 billion market capitalization of EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR), where Brain retired as CEO three years ago. But based on Tuesday's announcement of Enfinite Capital's first major deal, Brain, its CEO, appears to be right on the money.

According to the announcement, Enfinite Capital and Diode Ventures LLC, a Black & Veatch company, have been selected to finance, operate and maintain a $1.6 billion data center campus being developed by Alberta, Canada-based PointOne Development Corp. The six data center campus, branded Remington Technology Park, is being developed on 234 acres in Fauquier County, Va., part of a region fast emerging as the United States' internet hub. Overland Park-based Black & Veatch, a market leader in the design and deployment of data centers, has been hired to provide design-build services.

Looking to satisfy the growing global demand for build-to-suit, mission-critical infrastructure, PointOne chose Diode Ventures as its strategic execution partner to accelerate the development and construction of Remington Technology Park. According to a release from Black & Veatch, the park will offer modular mechanical data center infrastructure, market-leading operating efficiencies and competitive lease rates.

Diode Ventures, in conjunction with Enfinite Capital, helped to secure initial funding for the project and will continue to provide financial modeling support and capital assembly for the balance of the project, the release states.

"The Remington Technology Park is the kind of project that can offer attractive opportunities for investors seeking consistent returns in an era of historically low interest rates and increasing market uncertainty," Brain said in the release. "We're pleased to be part of this alliance with PointOne Development, Black & Veatch and Diode Ventures (and) to pair this innovative approach to project finance with a trusted design-build execution team."

Enfinite Capital is a Kansas City investment and asset management firm specializing in renewable energy, infrastructure and real estate assets. It primarily serves the large-scale commercial and industrial markets, providing program-focused, turnkey funding, development and acquisitions.

Diode Ventures offers asset-development solutions for clients in the energy, telecom, data center and other sectors that are looking for a partner able to implement large-scale infrastructure projects while reducing risk.

"Diode Ventures is excited to partner with the PointOne team on this enterprise-scale data center project," Brad Hardin, president of Diode Ventures, said in the release. "We believe there is tremendous growth in the data center market. By bringing capital and early-stage development services, we are delivering on our mission to expand the global opportunity base for Diode Ventures; our partner Enfinite Capital; and our parent company, Black & Veatch."

The hyperscale data center, which will include six facilities of roughly 200,000 square feet each, was conceived in response to rising demands for cloud storage in the age of Big Data, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

As part of its design-build role, Black & Veatch will develop a 300-megawatt power generation facility supporting Remington Technology Park.

Site advantages of the project include a location within the region's "Data Center Alley," through which an estimated 70 percent of the world's internet traffic flows, as well as infrastructure availability and campus customization opportunities.

Remington Technology Park will offer abundant connectivity to terrestrial and undersea fiber-optic cables and marks PointOne's initial foray into the U.S. data center market.

"PointOne's forward-thinking push to develop the Remington Technology Park meshes with our proven expertise and track record of making such ambitious projects a reality," Wesley Denton, managing director of Black & Veatch's data center business unit, said in the release. "Black & Veatch stands poised to provide innovative and scalable infrastructure solutions to make this fully integrated, hyper-scale data center project stand out in a region synonymous with data centers."