Compass Datacenters commits over $110,500 to shade the El Mirage YMCA's outdoor court. Sep 23, 2026, 07:00 ET Permanent shade for the kids and families of the Northwest Valley Family YMCA - the community's most-requested park amenity. EL MIRAGE, Ariz., Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - In partnership with the Northwest Valley Family YMCA, Compass Datacenters is funding a permanent shade structure over the outdoor basketball court, turning the branch's largest outdoor space into one that El Mirage families can use year-round. The El Mirage City Council approved the contract with Shade N' Net on June 16, and construction is expected to be complete by the end of the year. At 98 feet by 60 feet, the structure covers a hard-surface court that the Arizona summer currently takes away for months at a time. By reducing heat buildup on the concrete, the shade unit keeps the space comfortable for school-age programs and after-school practices. Without it, those practices get pushed into the evening, and families who can't make a late session miss out. The investment reflects Compass's 100-year neighbor philosophy, which commits the company to the long-term wellbeing of the communities where it operates. Compass is developing a campus in El Mirage, which is the start of a decades-long presence in the city. "On behalf of the City of El Mirage, I want to thank Compass Datacenters for their generous support of the new shade structure at the Northwest Valley YMCA basketball court, which will enhance the comfort and safety of the families and young athletes who use this space every day," said El Mirage Mayor Alexis Hermosillo. "As a new business preparing to join our community, Compass Datacenters is already making a meaningful impact. This partnership reflects the positive synergy amongst our businesses, nonprofits and the City. We are grateful for Compass Datacenters' commitment to El Mirage and are excited to welcome them as a community partner." The donation funds a shade structure that residents had requested. In the City's 2025 Parks and Recreation Master Plan Community Survey, El Mirage residents ranked shade areas as the highest-demand park amenity, ahead of every other request. The project also advances the Quality of Life goals in the City's FY2026-2028 Strategic Plan, which commit El Mirage to strengthening community bonds, promoting health and wellness and expanding recreational opportunities across all neighborhoods - in part by upgrading parks and recreational spaces so they are safe, accessible and engaging. Shade N' Net, the City's shade structure vendor, has recently completed six other shade structures across the El Mirage park system. The City will maintain the new structure as part of its management of the YMCA facility. The project began with a question. Compass' El Mirage campus shares a property line with the Northwest Valley Family YMCA, and upon breaking ground, Compass asked branch executive Mary Davis what her members needed most. Her answer was one word: shade. Davis had kept a shade structure on the branch's wish list for all five years she has led the location, and the City's Parks and Recreation Department and City Management team carried the project forward to Council. "For months out of the year, we have a beautiful court that nobody can stand on," said Mary Davis, [District Executive], Northwest Valley Family YMCA. "Come July, the concrete makes the decision for us. Coaches move practice into the dark, our preschoolers stay inside and a space built for this community sits empty. Shade changes that math. It gives us back the biggest outdoor space we have - for our members and for every family in El Mirage who walks through those gates." Covered, the court opens to programming the branch has never been able to hold there. Group fitness classes move outdoors. The full-day preschool, open from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and school-age programs get outdoor time for bikes, basketball and play. Community events gain a shaded gathering space for several hundred people, including the branch's Trunk or Treat each October. The structure sits beside the branch's already-covered pool deck, extending shade across the outdoor play space. "Being a good neighbor starts when the first shovel hits the ground and continues long after ribbon cutting," said AJ Byers, President of Compass Datacenters. "Our campuses are built to last a century, and so are our relationships with the communities around them. When the Northwest Valley Family YMCA told us shade would make a meaningful difference for the community, supporting the project was an easy decision." About the City of El Mirage Incorporated on June 25, 1951, the City of El Mirage is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2026. The City is proud to serve as the Gateway to the West Valley of Phoenix. In addition to expanding its parks and recreation services, El Mirage remains committed to working with partners to strengthen regional and global connectivity, attract business development, and provide strategic access to key transportation corridors. About the Northwest Valley Family YMCA The Northwest Valley Family YMCA, at 12450 W. Cinnabar Ave. in El Mirage, is a branch of Valley of the Sun YMCA. It serves more than 4,300 memberships with youth sports, swim lessons, group fitness, teen programs, and licensed preschool and school-age care, and opens its facilities to the surrounding community. About Compass Compass Datacenters does data centers differently. The company develops and operates sustainable Class A, Community-First campuses guided by a 100-year neighbor philosophy that invests in the workforce, infrastructure, and well-being of every community it calls home. Backed by the institutional strength of Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Brookfield Infrastructure and KKR, Compass delivers high-quality facilities at speed for the cloud and hyperscale customers driving today's economy. By combining industrialized, prefabricated design with advanced hybrid cooling that uses no water during operations, responsible energy use, and zero-waste construction, Compass takes a more sustainable approach to digital infrastructure supporting the company's built-to-last vision. The result is move-in ready capacity that scales efficiently and responsibly. Data Centers Done Differently. SOURCE Compass Datacenters

Northern Virginia data centre market: 4,650 MW live as Dominion's 40 GW interconnection queue becomes the binding constraint. The world's largest data centre market has essentially run out of near-term power. With vacancy at 1.8% and Dominion's queue backlogged past 2032, Loudoun and Prince William counties are rationing capacity. The world's densest data centre market hits a power wall. Northern Virginia now carries roughly 4,650 MW of live commissioned data centre capacity across Loudoun, Prince William, Fairfax and Fauquier counties, more than the next three largest US markets combined. Vacancy has compressed to 1.8%, the tightest of any of the 50 major global markets tracked this cycle, down from 3.1% a year ago. The story here is no longer demand. It is supply, specifically electron supply, and the constraint has shifted decisively from land and permitting to Dominion Energy's interconnection queue, which now carries more than 40,000 MW of pending data centre requests against a service territory built for a fraction of that load. Loudoun County, the original "Data Center Alley" anchored around Ashburn, remains the core at roughly 2,900 MW live. Prince William County has emerged as the primary growth corridor, with 1,050 MW operating and another 1,800 MW under construction following approval of the Prince William Digital Gateway rezoning. Fairfax and Fauquier together add the balance, with Fauquier increasingly absorbing overflow demand as Loudoun's substation capacity tightens. Major operators and the consolidation of scale. QTS Realty (Blackstone-owned) and Digital Realty remain the two largest wholesale landlords in the region, each controlling in excess of 400 MW of operating capacity across multi-building campuses in Loudoun and Prince William. Aligned Data Centers, now backed by the $40 billion Microsoft/NVIDIA/xAI consortium capital structure finalised earlier this year, has expanded its Manassas and Fauquier footprint to roughly 340 MW live with a further 600 MW contracted for delivery through 2028. CloudHQ, Compass Datacenters and Vantage Data Centers collectively account for another 900 MW, while Amazon Web Services continues to self-develop the largest single share of capacity in the market, estimated at over 1,100 MW across its own campuses, a figure it does not disclose but which brokers and county tax filings consistently corroborate. Equinix maintains a smaller but strategically critical retail colocation footprint concentrated around the Equinix Internet Exchange in Ashburn, which remains one of the top three internet peering points globally by traffic volume, giving the region network density that pure hyperscale markets like Columbus or Dallas cannot replicate. Recent transaction activity. Capital markets activity in the region has been dominated by land and power banking rather than stabilised asset sales. Compass Datacenters closed a $1.2 billion recapitalisation in June 2026 specifically to fund substation construction across three Prince William sites. Aligned's regional build-out is being financed through the broader consortium facility rather than standalone project debt, reflecting a shift toward vertically integrated capital structures that bundle power procurement with construction financing. QTS secured a $780 million construction loan in April tied explicitly to a signed 15-year, 180 MW lease with an unnamed hyperscale tenant, believed by brokers to be either Microsoft or Meta given the load profile. Land transactions tell the clearest story. Raw industrial-zoned parcels in Prince William County with confirmed Dominion service agreements have traded at $2.1 million to $2.6 million per acre in 2026, roughly triple pricing from three years ago, and parcels without confirmed power now trade at a discount exceeding 60%, an unusually explicit market signal that power, not land, is the scarce input. Development pipeline and the power bottleneck. Approximately 6,200 MW of additional capacity is in some stage of the entitlement or construction pipeline across the five-county region, but only around 1,900 MW of that has a confirmed Dominion interconnection date within the next 36 months. The remainder sits in a queue that Dominion itself has acknowledged, in regulatory filings to the Virginia State Corporation Commission, cannot be fully served without new generation and transmission investment extending into the early 2030s. Dominion's 2026 Integrated Resource Plan filing projects data centre load in its Virginia territory reaching 15,000 MW to 18,000 MW by 2035, roughly triple the utility's entire non-data-centre commercial and industrial base combined. To meet this, Dominion has proposed accelerating two new combined-cycle gas units totalling 1,700 MW alongside expanded transmission from the PJM Interconnection grid, but permitting and the now-familiar 36-month transformer lead time mean the earliest meaningful new capacity blocks will not energise before late 2028. Construction costs in the region have risen accordingly. Northern Virginia build costs now average $12.6 million per MW, roughly 12% above the $11.3 million per MW global benchmark, driven by land premiums, skilled labour scarcity in a market building simultaneously for a dozen operators, and the rising share of liquid-cooled halls being specified for AI-dense tenants, which now account for an estimated 40% of new construction starts in the region against a 34% global average. Regulatory environment: from welcome mat to gatekeeping. The political posture toward data centres has hardened markedly since 2024. Prince William County's approval of the 2,100-acre Digital Gateway rezoning came only after a contentious multi-year process and now includes mandatory noise buffers, tree preservation requirements and a community benefits package exceeding $500 million in county-negotiated infrastructure contributions. Loudoun County has since adopted its own data centre overlay district, restricting new campuses to designated industrial corridors and imposing a minimum one-acre setback with vegetative screening, effectively closing off further expansion in several previously eligible parcels near residential growth areas. Virginia's sales and use tax exemption for data centre equipment, the single most important state-level incentive underpinning the market's growth since 2010, faces its most serious legislative challenge yet. A bill introduced in the 2026 General Assembly session proposed capping the exemption's applicability for facilities exceeding 100 MW of critical load, citing strain on the grid and residential electricity rates, which have risen 22% in Dominion's territory since 2022 amid rate cases explicitly linking the increases to data centre-driven transmission investment. The bill did not pass this session but is expected to return in 2027, and several county boards have signalled support for a state-level cost allocation mechanism that would shift more transmission expense onto large-load customers rather than the general ratepayer base. Community opposition, while less visible than in markets like Manassas Park or parts of Loudoun's western districts, has already contributed to the withdrawal of two proposed campuses totalling roughly 380 MW in Fauquier County over the past 18 months, part of the broader $156 billion in projects nationally delayed or blocked by local resistance. Outlook. Northern Virginia will remain the largest data centre market in the world through this decade, but its growth rate is decelerating from a structural ceiling rather than a demand ceiling, and that distinction matters for capital allocation. Investors should expect vacancy to stay below 3% through 2028 regardless of how much capacity nominally enters the pipeline, because Dominion's interconnection timeline, not construction schedules, will govern delivery. The practical effect is a widening bifurcation: assets with confirmed power agreements will command premium valuations and rents 15% to 20% above unpowered land, while speculative development without utility commitments faces a real risk of becoming stranded capital. Operators able to secure behind-the-meter generation, whether gas turbines or emerging fuel cell deployments, will hold a decisive competitive advantage over those still waiting in Dominion's queue, and I expect at least two of the region's top five operators to announce dedicated on-site generation capacity exceeding 200 MW before the end of 2027. Northern Virginia's dominance is not in question. Its growth rate is, and that repricing is already underway. Need bespoke market analysis? 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Compass Datacenters resubmits application in Shawnee County. Posted: Aug 28, 2026 / 06:37 PM CDT Updated: Aug 28, 2026 / 06:37 PM CDT TOPEKA (KSNT) - A data center developer has resubmitted its application for a data center project in Shawnee County Friday. Amy Conway with Compass Datacenters confirmed with 27 News that her company has resubmitted its application to Shawnee County for the proposed data center project. Compass Datacenters had until noon on Aug. 28 to send its application. Shawnee County staff labeled the initial conditional use permit (CUP) application from Compass Datacenters as incomplete in early August. We contacted Shawnee County on Aug. 28 for an updated statement on the application process, but have yet to receive a response. Compass Datacenters is looking to bring a new data center campus consisting of 10 buildings on just over 600 acres of land to an area southwest of the City of Topeka. The company said the new data center could bring hundreds of new jobs to the local area. Shawnee County commissioners approved a six-month moratorium on data centers on Aug. 13. Part of this decision included a measure that commissioners won't approve, deny or otherwise take final action on the Compass Datacenters application while the moratorium remains in place.