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New data centers eye vacated site in Chesterfield
January 5, 2026
Less than two years after buying the site of an ill-fated economic development project in Chesterfield’s Meadowville Technology Park, a data center development duo is ready to put the land to work.
Plans were recently filed by Ireland-based Chirisa and Northern Virginia’s American Real Estate Partners to construct two data center buildings totaling 380,000 square feet at 1600 Digital Drive.
The project, which can be built by right, would rise on the site of the previously unfinished and now-demolished Cartograf facility, a once highly touted packaging factory that was announced in 2019 but ultimately never materialized.
Chirisa and American Real Estate Partners acquired the 100-acre Digital Drive site for $16.5 million in 2024. They secured the site after a judge ordered a sale of the property to satisfy liens held by firms involved in that project.
Chirisa and American Real Estate are working on the new project with private equity firm Blue Owl.
Each new building will be about 190,000 square feet and have 100 megawatts of power each. One building is expected to be operational in late 2027, and the other would begin operating in mid-2028, said David Kelly, head of U.S. real estate for Chirisa.
DPR Construction is the general contractor. Dallas-based Gensler is the project’s architect. Bohler is the civil engineer. Plans for the project were received by Chesterfield the first week of December and were still being reviewed by staff as of later that month.
Chirisa, which has an existing data center campus in Meadowville Tech Park, wants to expand its local operations in part because the area is in close proximity to an epicenter of data facilities in the D.C. region and has a strong workforce to support the industry, Kelly said.
“Richmond really has turned into a tier-one market. It’s not far from D.C and Northern Virginia. And the labor pool (in the Richmond area), the contractors and data center operators that we’re able to hire, has been awesome. It’s definitely been a fantastic location for us,” Kelly said.
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