Severn, Maryland (November 2020) Published by Maryland Newsletters
Oppidan Will Cede Three-Warehouse Layout
The ground that would have made up the Route 100 Logistics Park in Severn has been sold – and the development plan is changed.
Instead of a three-warehouse logistics park, officials from Oppidan Investment, representing the new ownership, say they intend now to build a single data-center building. The Land Records do not yet reveal the legal buyer and the price, but Oppidan has said publicly it will build a 109,455 square foot data center. The company builds data centers nationally for end users, both public and private.
The deal for the approximately 50-acre property, located on Sandy Farms Road just off Telegraph Road near Route 100, closed shortly after Thanksgiving Day, and Oppidan recently revealed to local residents its plans for the tract. Though the ground is entitled for 598,000 square feet of distribution space, Oppidan will amend those approvals in favor of the single-building layout.
The seller was a partnership headed by Chesapeake Real Estate Group. The group had contracted for the property and won site development plan approval for the nearly 600,000 foot park, across three buildings. Initially, Route 100 Logistics had been slated for 750,000 feet, but the developers trimmed the yield back after the county changed its forest conservation laws.
Oppidan’s plan makes for the second recent data-center park, after Microsoft bought property in Annapolis Junction with at least some data-center space in mind. The software company has submitted a plan for a first data center building of about 83,000 square feet, off Brock Bridge Road. That a data center will be built in Severn now instead of distribution means that about a half million feet of new space expected to come to the market won’t be built. Maryland, meanwhile, appears to be developing a fledgling data center industry.