Developer wants to put more than $1B into Lexington data center, records show
The developer looking to transform a former Lexmark data center campus into one that serves artificial intelligence demand planned to invest approximately $1.05 billion over time at the facility.
The investment could come in two parts: first, another $300 million in the facility, and then, an additional up to $750 million over time as power capacity increases.
The dollar figures are according to a June 2 email the development company’s President and CEO Scott Willis sent to Commerce Lexington’s Executive Vice President of Economic Development Gina Greathouse, which was forwarded to the city’s Chief Development Officer Kevin Atkins. The email chain was acquired by the Herald-Leader through a public records request.
“We are looking to build a strong partnership with the city of Lexington, the power company and plan to invest a significant amount of capital over the next few years and just want to explore any incentives that would be available,” Willis wrote to Greathouse.
If the company does invest more than $1 billion at the facility, it would make it one of the state’s most expensive data center projects, behind the multi-billion dollar TeraWulf data center for Anthropic in Hancock County, the developer’s other project in Boyd County and the PowerHouse Data Centers and Poe Companies project in Jefferson County.
Willis leads DartPoints, the data center development company that acquired nearly 30 acres on New Circle Road in mid-May. The $29 million former Lexmark property was previously used by IBM as a data center. It already has cooling and power management equipment in place in addition to backup generators, and there is a Kentucky Utilities substation on site.
In an announcement sharing details of the property acquisition, the company said it would redevelop the site to support AI and believed it could scale power capacity from about 30 megawatts to 70 megawatts, or the electricity equivalent of that needed to power around 70,000 homes at once. The campus spans approximately 343,000 square feet and includes roughly 81,000 square feet of raised data center space.
DartPoints operates enterprise data centers or those that are privately owned or leased to support a specific information technology and storage needs. It generally has a smaller physical footprint and takes less power compared to a hyperscale data center, or the kind built by cloud providers like Amazon or Meta for artificial intelligence platforms.
While the announcement of the property acquisition said “Lexington stood out for its combination of existing data center infrastructure, utility support, zoning readiness and room for expansion,” it was scant on details of what scaling the site might look like and how long it would take.
The email is also lacking in details as to what Willis, Greathouse and Atkins were intending to discuss and when other than to meet the developer’s interest in making a connection with the chamber, “sharing my objectives for DartPoints in Lexington and the state of Kentucky, and exploring any available tax incentives that could be available,” Willis said in the email.
Greathouse said she could not comment on confidential clients and a DartPoints spokesperson did not respond to a request for more information from Willis. A spokesperson from Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton’s office said it did not have any comment.
Since the property sale became public June 3, Gorton said her office had informed DartPoints it would not support public incentives for the project, but did support “very tight controls.”
A zoning ordinance text amendment process was initiated by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council June 9 when it unanimously voted to have planning staff draft rules. Lexington’s planning staff released a draft of changes last month.
The 20-page draft amendment prohibits any data center from operating in agricultural zones and does not allow major data centers — those it defines as any larger than 50,000 square feet — to locate anywhere in Fayette County. The amendment also outlines conditional use related to data centers, or the specific requirements a developer must meet to bend regular rules of the zone a property might be in.
The city’s Planning Commission will discuss and take potential action, plus hold a public hearing on the amendment, at a July 30 meeting. In the meantime, the city launched Engage Lexington to gather feedback on data center developments.
At the same June 9 meeting, council passed a moratorium on data center development in Lexington which paused permits, development plans and zone change requests until at least Oct. 31.
DartPoints did not apply for the necessary approvals needed to operate before Council put a moratorium on issuing them. Without a zoning compliance permit and certificate of occupancy, DartPoints cannot operate, Department of Planning and Preservation Commissioner Keith Horn previously told the Herald-Leader.
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