Powered Dirt Is the New Gold Standard

Real Estate Insights. Success Mindset. One Step at a Time.

Issue #57 | June 28, 2026

🧠 Market Insights

Powered Dirt Is the New Gold Standard

The data center land grab just got another new headline. Digital Realty closed on roughly 1,440 acres inside Astra Enterprise Park in De Soto, Kansas, this week for approximately $475 million. That works out to about $330,000 per acre.

And this wasn't a trophy market. De Soto is Kansas City metro. Secondary market. For now. But it had exactly what hyperscalers are hunting: a signed utility agreement with local provider Evergy for 600 megawatts of capacity, a clear path to 2 gigawatts at full build, and no moratorium standing in the way.

Here's the backstory worth knowing. Astra Enterprise Park isn't raw farmland. It's a 9,000-acre industrial redevelopment of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, one of the largest in the world during World War II. The Army closed it in 1993. Cleanup and redevelopment have been underway for decades. Panasonic is already building a $4 billion EV battery facility on 300 acres of the same park. The city of De Soto has invested $180 million in infrastructure improvements. This is brownfield redevelopment at scale, and it paid off in a very big way.

That distinction matters more than most landowners realize. CBRE's Global Data Center Trends report, released this week, put the headline simply: demand is outpacing supply even as new construction accelerates. U.S. vacancy sits at roughly 2% nationally. Northern Virginia is at 0.3%. JLL projects the industry will need 40,000 additional acres of powered land over the next five years, on top of the 20,000 currently in use.

But here's the catch. While hyperscalers are writing nine-figure checks for powered sites, communities are pulling up the drawbridge. New York's legislature passed a one-year moratorium on data center permits for projects over 20 megawatts. Monterey Park, California, banned them outright by a ballot measure. Senators Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez introduced a federal moratorium bill last week. That's 97 active moratoriums across 38 states and counting.

Two markets are forming. Land with secured power and entitlements: $200,000 to $1,000,000 per acre. Land without: a long wait and a hope.

And that divide gets sharper when you factor in something most land conversations skip entirely. Rates. The Fed's new chair Kevin Warsh held rates at 3.50 to 3.75% this month but stripped all cut guidance. Nine of 18 members signaled a possible hike before year end. Bank of America now forecasts three hikes through December. The 10-year Treasury sits near 4.4%. Land is the most rate-sensitive asset in CRE because it doesn't generate income while you carry it. Every basis point matters. The sites that can't answer the infrastructure question clearly are also the sites bleeding carry costs with nothing to offset them.

Dirt Dawg Take: Secondary markets are becoming primary markets. Not because of location. Because of power, entitlements, and the absence of a moratorium. De Soto, Kansas beat Northern Virginia this week. That is the headline.

✨ The Alpha Effect

You're Not Waiting. You're Positioned.

Most people look at a rising rate environment and feel stuck. Deals slow down. Buyers get cautious. The phone goes quiet. And the temptation is to read that silence as a verdict on your assets.

It's not.

Here's the mindset shift that separates the land investor who panics from the one who wins: patience is not the absence of action. It's a form of preparation.

De Soto didn't become a $330,000 per acre story because someone got lucky. That land sat inside a planned industrial park built on the bones of a former ammunition plant. It wasn't pristine. It was complicated. Decades of contamination. An Army cleanup still running. Remediation timelines that scared most investors off for a generation. That complexity is exactly why the land was available to position around at all.

By the time Digital Realty showed up with a $475 million check, the hard work had already been done. The city invested in infrastructure. The Army cleaned up the site. Panasonic moved in next door. The brownfield got de-risked, acre by acre, year by year. The patience wasn't passive. It was the work.

That's the lesson. The landowner who wins isn't the one who holds raw speculative acreage and hopes. It's the one who understands what's being built around their property, tracks the infrastructure investments happening nearby, and stays patient long enough for the market to catch up to what the dirt was already becoming.

Your brownfield isn't a liability. It might be the next De Soto.

The best land deals are not discoveries. They are confirmations of preparation that was already in motion.

🚀 One Step at a Time

This week, do one thing. Just one.

Find Your De Soto.

Look at the secondary markets within 100 miles of a major metro where data center moratoriums have not landed yet. Not the obvious plays. Not the markets everyone is already talking about. The quiet ones with utility infrastructure, industrial bones, and room to build.

Then ask a second question most people skip: what complicated dirt is sitting in those markets? Former industrial sites. Brownfields. Properties with a cleanup history that kept the tourists away. That complexity is exactly what kept the price accessible and the competition thin, right up until someone did the work to de-risk it.

That's where the next $330,000 per acre story is being written right now. Before the headlines. Before the bidding war. Before Digital Realty shows up with a check.

You don't need a perfect market. You need a prepared one.

Small steps compound. The Kansas City metro was not on anyone's radar until it was the only answer.

Here's to building your success, one step at a time...

from the dirt up.

Kris "Dirt Dawg" McGee 🐾

The Dirt Dawg Den