Amazon Data Services buys $73M data center site in Becker
Amazon Data Services is the buyer of a Becker site slated for a major data center development, according to an electronic certificate of real estate value filed Thursday.
Amazon paid $73.56 million for the 348-acre parcel, according to the CRV. The transaction closed Oct. 30.
The seller was Elk River Technologies, a Minnesota LLC associated with Diode Ventures, a Kansas-based “global infrastructure solutions” company that serves clients in the data center, telecommunications and renewable energy sectors. Elk River Technologies purchased the site from Xcel Energy in April for $7.97 million, according to a certificate of real estate value.
Elk River Technologies envisioned “a turnkey data center development” on that site that will
Provide up to $1 billion in capital investments to the city of Becker, as well as 100 high-paying permanent jobs and more than 1,200 construction jobs,
Xcel Energy spokesperson Kevin Cross told Finance & Commerce in December 2022.
It’s unclear what Elk River Technologies has done in the past six months to advance the project. Thursday’s eCRV notes a land-only sale and with “data center and substation” as the planned use.
Large-scale data centers require hundreds of megawatts of electric power, equivalent to tens or even hundreds of thousands of homes, and utilities often take years to evaluate their requests to connect to the grid. That means data center developers typically approach electric utilities before seeking land use permits from local governments, Farmington Community and Economic Development Director Deanna Kuennen told Finance & Commerce in September.
Xcel’s transmission-to-load interconnection queue shows at least nine requests submitted since Elk River Technologies closed on the Becker site, including a “Project Data Center” request filed on May 1. But no additional information is available about who’s behind that application, which Xcel expects to finish evaluating by the end of 2029. Several other major data center projects are in the works across central and southern Minnesota, including one proposed in Rosemount by Meta, another in Farmington by Tract, and a third in Chaska by CloudHQ.
Becker Community Development Director Jacob Sanders told the city planning commission in May that his office had not received any permit applications or timing updates from Elk River Technologies. Sanders told Finance & Commerce in September that neither the Elk River Technologies site nor a nearby site controlled by Microsoft had seen construction activity.
Amazon spokesperson said in a statement, and :
We are constantly evaluating new locations based on customer demand. We recently purchased land in Becker and are performing due diligence in exploring possible data center locations,
The Diode Ventures representative listed on the April eCRV did not respond to detailed questions about status and timing of construction activity and city or utility permit applications.
Representatives for the city of Becker and Sherburne County also did not respond to requests for comment.
The Elk River Technologies site was part of Xcel Energy’s sprawling coal-fired Sherco power plant, which the utility plans to retire in phases by 2030. Xcel is building a 710-megawatt solar farm nearby that it says will be fully operational by 2026 and has been closely involved in other efforts to redevelop the area.
An Xcel spokesperson said in a statement,
As the electric provider for the area, we will be engaged in the site development process and providing the electricity needed to reliably power the site once operational,
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Amazon Data Services buys $73M data center site in Becker, source
