VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — City and state leaders broke ground on a new $80 million data facility in Virginia Beach, Wednesday.
The facility will contain two 31,000 square feet data center spaces, including a multi-purpose cable landing station and “edge” computing data center facility.
Developer PointOne Development Corporation said it will feature state-of-the-art data centers to help Virginia Beach grow into a world-class data hub.
"Social media companies, streaming services, they are going to be placing their infrastructure, their servers, their computer equipment in our facility," said Tim Shaheen, Chief Revenue Officer for PointOne Development Corporation.
Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer said the new data center diversifies the Virginia Beach economy by extending beyond the military and tourism industries.
"Those are the types of jobs that we really need here, those high-tech jobs, those high-paying jobs and this is just going to be an incubator to go forward with other companies wanting to come here," said Dyer.
Seventy percent of the world's internet traffic runs through the Commonwealth, and state leaders said the tech sector is the biggest single employment growth opportunity in Virginia.
"That's why we're putting so much energy into the sector, it's why we're excited about data centers, it's why you see the Commonwealth of Virginia investing hundreds of millions of dollars to grow the tech talent pipeline," said Stephen Moret, President and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
Construction will begin later in May and it's expected to be completed in early 2020.
Click here to learn more about PointOne Development Corporation.