Microsoft has acquired a plot of land in the north of the United Kingdom for the development of a new data center. Real estate group Harworth announced this week the sale of 48 acres of their site in Skelton Grange, Leeds, to Microsoft for £106.6 million ($134.83 million).
The deal includes two adjacent plots, with closures scheduled for the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2026. The purchase was made by Microsoft MSFT MCIO Limited. Harworth has indicated that Microsoft plans to develop a hyperscale data center campus on the site.
Parcel 1, comprising 27 acres, was sold for £52.9 million ($67 million). Parcel 2, consisting of 21 acres, will be sold for £53.2 million ($67.3 million). No further details were shared about Microsoft’s specific plans for the site.
Located southeast of Leeds, Harworth purchased the former Skelton Grange power station site in December 2014 for approximately £3 million ($3.8 million), with remediation and enabling works commencing shortly after. The company has secured planning approval for over 1 million square feet (92,903 sqm) of industrial and logistics space on the site to date.
“Since we re-listed in 2015, Harworth has successfully completed a number of significant transactions that create value for our shareholders, but this sale at Skelton Grange is the largest to date and is another exemplary case demonstrating the successful regeneration of industrial land,” said Lynda Shillaw, CEO of Harworth Group. “This transaction further expands our expertise to include data centers and evidences the growing spectrum of industries that continue to be attracted to the projects that Harworth brings to the brownfield market.”
Harworth has owned the Skelton site since 2016. The company sold around 20 acres to Enfinium in 2019, where a 49MW renewable electricity generation facility is being developed. In 2020, Skelton Peak Power submitted plans to develop a 100MW battery energy storage facility on five acres of the site.
The Skelton Grange power station consisted of two coal stations in the Stourton area of Leeds, totaling 800MW. Work on the first plant began in the late 1940s, and work on the second one ended in the early 1960s; Plant A was decommissioned in 1983 and Plant B in 1994.
After being decommissioned, the site was considered for a new stadium for the Leeds United football team in 2001, and later as a depot for the planned and then abandoned eastern branch of the HS2 high-speed rail line. RWE npower wanted to build industrial warehouses on the site from 2007.
This is the second data center campus that Microsoft plans to develop near Leeds.
Source: DCD