The Data Center Land Rush Just Ran Out of Clean Dirt

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

Issue #59 | July 12, 2026

🧠 Market Insights

The Data Center Land Rush Just Ran Out of Clean Dirt

CBRE dropped new numbers last week, and they confirm what every site selector already knows in their gut. Data center capacity in the world's largest markets jumped 25% over the past year. Vacancy kept falling anyway.

“Demand is outpacing even aggressive new supply increases,” said Pat Lynch, CBRE's Executive Managing Director of Data Center Solutions. Companies can no longer assume capacity will be there when they need it.

The four biggest U.S. markets, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Chicago, added nearly 2 gigawatts of new capacity in the past year. That's up 33% year over year. And it still isn't enough.

Here's why. Power availability remains the top constraint, with grid connection wait times stretching years in some markets. Local opposition has become just as big a problem. Zoning and permitting processes that used to be predictable are now regular venues for pushback.

So where's the smart capital turning when the easy dirt is gone? Old industrial ground. In January, EPA issued formal guidance on redeveloping Superfund and brownfield sites as AI data centers, following a 2025 executive order directing agencies to speed federal permitting. The math is simple. Many of the 450,000-plus brownfield sites across the country already carry industrial zoning, existing substations, and grid connections. Everything a hyperscaler needs, without the years-long wait in the interconnection queue. A 100 megawatt campus only needs about 100 acres.

Crow Holdings is already proving the model. Its 245 megawatt infill campus near Dallas sits inside a working utility and fiber ecosystem instead of waiting in line for one. Florida and Connecticut both passed legislation this year streamlining brownfield redevelopment, and more states are watching to see if it works.

Dirt Dawg Take: The clean greenfield trade has you bidding against hyperscalers with unlimited capital for acreage next to a substation. The brownfield trade has you doing the diligence nobody else wants to do. That's not a consolation prize. That's the opportunity.

✨ The Alpha Effect

Damaged Land Isn't Broken. It's Unpriced.

For thirty-two years I've watched “contamination” end a conversation about a parcel before it started. Buyers walked. Brokers stopped calling. The site sat.

Now that word might be the thing that starts the conversation. Not because the risk disappeared. Because the crowd chasing clean acreage bid the easy sites into the stratosphere, and the sites everyone dismissed are suddenly the ones with the zoning, the substation, and the room to build.

This is the same lesson I keep relearning. Complexity isn't the obstacle. It's the filter. A Phase I report, a legacy easement, an old permit nobody's looked at in twenty years. That's exactly the kind of homework that keeps the tourists out and leaves the field open for whoever's willing to do it.

Second-order thinking means asking what happens after everyone piles into the same trade. When power scarcity pushed greenfield prices past a million dollars an acre, the next move wasn't obvious to most people. It was obvious to whoever was already looking at the sites nobody wanted.

The land the market calls damaged is often just the land the market hasn't finished pricing yet.

🚀 One Step at a Time

Action Steps This Week

1. Run a Brownfield Screen.

Pull up EPA's ACRES database or a similar screening tool for your target market. Look for parcels over 100 acres with existing industrial zoning and a documented history of grid infrastructure. This is a real buyer pool now, not a theory.

2. Call an Environmental Consultant Before You Need One.

Line up a Phase I ESA provider today. Ask what a preliminary screen costs and how fast they turn one around. In a market where speed to power is the whole game, knowing your diligence timeline before you're under contract is leverage.

3. Revisit One Site You Already Wrote Off.

Think back to a parcel you or a client passed on because of legacy contamination or an old industrial use. Run the numbers again against today's power constrained market. What looked like a liability eighteen months ago might be exactly the profile hyperscalers are hunting for now.

Small steps compound. The dirt nobody wanted yesterday is the dirt everyone's underwriting today.

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

from the dirt up.

Kris “Dirt Dawg” McGee 🐾