Utah-Based Data Center Developer Purchased 165 Acres for $62.7M in Mesa

Article originally posted on AZ Central on September 1, 2023

A Utah-based data center company purchased 165 acres of state land in southeast Mesa for $62.7 million.

Wes Swenson, the CEO of Novva Data Centers, was the sole bidder at Tuesday’s auction for the parcel along Warner Road and Loop 202, located within the Hawes Crossing master planned community on more than 1,000 acres.

The company already has data centers in Utah, Nevada and Colorado. This project will be Novva’s entrance to Arizona.

“We’re excited. This is a big, big market we’ve been trying to get into,” he said. Swenson said metro Phoenix is the second-largest market for data center development. East Mesa has seen a boom in data center development including big names like Google, Apple and Meta all located in the city.

Swenson said he anticipates making a $5 billion capital investment over five to seven years. The plan is to have the project reviewed by the city’s planning and zoning board in the first quarter of 2024 and break ground in 2025.

Data centers have been criticized by the public for their water use and lack of high paying jobs. Swenson said, Novva is focused on environmentally friendly methods like using waterless air-cooling technology. “We think this would be a great opportunity to do a green approach to data centers where it’s maybe not been done” before here, he said.

Another technique Swenson plans to apply is atmospheric water generation which takes water from the air and turns it into potable water.

The location is a prime spot to develop an estimated 1.5 million-square-foot campus, Swenson said, because of its location near the highway and its separation from residential housing. The parcel of land is already zoned for this type of development.

The facades of the buildings will be a “high architecture” design that could embrace the southwest style, Swenson said, the goal being to make the data centers more visually appealing compared to his competitors.

“From street view, you’ll barely know there are data centers there,” he said.