Digital Realty De Soto AI Data Center Campus
Status: Active Development / Site Planning Phase | Location: Astra Enterprise Park, near W. 103rd Street and Lexington Avenue, De Soto, Kansas, USA
Project Overview
Digital Realty's multi-billion-dollar entry into the Kansas City metropolitan area represents a massive paradigm shift for industrial technology deployment in the American Midwest. Situated within the historic 9,000-acre Astra Enterprise Park, the former site of the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant the development spans a combined 1,400 acres split across two major master-planned zones: Astra North and Astra South. The active first development phase, designated as Astra North, encompasses approximately 280 acres of light-industrial zoned land optimized specifically for mega-scale critical compute nodes.
The architectural blueprint outlines a hyper-dense development program consisting of nine specialized data center buildings alongside supporting administrative complexes, culminating in approximately 3 million square feet of mission-critical floor space. Strategically positioned adjacent to the massive 300-acre Panasonic electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant, the Digital Realty campus leverages the region’s extensive utility access, robust skilled workforce, and high-capacity long-haul dark fiber corridors.
Engineered specifically to accommodate next-generation high-density artificial intelligence, deep learning training models, and large-scale enterprise workloads, the site overcomes traditional grid connectivity limitations through an aggressive localized infrastructure rollout. The campus architecture shifts away from traditional commercial designs by housing heavy electrical, power transmission, and mechanical cooling arrays entirely indoors or behind advanced acoustic screening assemblies. This ensures strict compliance with community sound thresholds and zero-glare lighting mandates while scaling to unprecedented operational compute metrics. Upon completion, the campus will provide critical low-latency edge and core multi-cloud node computing, anchoring Kansas City's position as a major cloud routing crossroad in North America.
Quick Facts
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Project Name | Digital Realty De Soto AI Data Center Campus |
| Location | Astra Enterprise Park, near W. 103rd Street and Lexington Avenue, De Soto, Kansas, USA |
| Status | Active Development / Site Planning Phase |
| Commissioning | Active Development / Site Planning Phase |
| Total IT Load | 480 MW |
| Total Capacity | 600 MW (Initial phase configuration across 9 proposed buildings) |
| Tier Level | Tier III Compliant Standard |
| Project Type | Greenfield Hyperscale Cloud & Accelerated AI Campus |
City Profile
| Header | Details |
|---|
| City Name | Kansas |
| Population | ~197,000 (Kansas City, Kansas) |
| Urban Agglomeration | ~2.2 million (Kansas City Metropolitan Area) |
| City GDP | ~$150–170 billion (Kansas City Metro) |
| Per Capita Income | ~$55,000 |
| City Tier | Tier 2 (Emerging U.S. Tech & Logistics Hub) |
| Key Strengths | Central U.S. location, strong logistics and transportation network, growing data center market, affordable land and power, skilled workforce |
Companies Involved
| Header | Details |
|---|
| Developer / Operator | Digital Realty |
| Strategic Infrastructure Partner | Evergy (Utility Power Provider), Sunflower Redevelopment Group, City of De Soto |
| Construction Contractor | To be finalized (Top-Tier US Mission-Critical General Contractor) |
| MEP Engineering | Digital Realty Global Design & MEP Consulting Engineers |
| Network Connectivity | Tier-1 long-haul telecom carriers, diverse transcontinental fiber rings, and localized dark fiber trunks. |
| Power Infrastructure | Two dedicated high-voltage on-site substations connecting directly to Evergy's transmission grid under a structured Energy Service Agreement. |
Technical Specifications
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| Power Capacity | 600 MW initial allocated substation capacity (designed to support scaling) |
| UPS Redundancy | Distributed Reserve / Block-Isolated static UPS topology paired with lithium-ion battery energy storage rooms. |
| Cooling System | Closed-loop chilled water distribution networks using waterless air-cooled economizer chillers, engineered with direct-to-chip liquid cooling manifolds for high-density GPU server racks. |
| Connectivity | Carrier-neutral infrastructure featuring quad-path underground concrete fiber entry vaults and dedicated Meet-Me-Rooms. |
| PUE Target | 1.18 |
| Energy Mix | Complemented by Evergy's regional grid transition plan, targeting a high percentage of local utility-scale solar and wind matching programs. |
Milestones
| Header | Details |
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| Announcement | June 9, 2026 |
| Construction Start | Late 2026 (Targeted civil land balancing and foundation grading) |
| Phase 1 Go-Live | H1 2028 |
| Full Buildout | Late 2031 (Phased commissioning across all nine delivery blocks) |
Investment Details
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| Total Investment | $4,000,000,000 (Estimated initial phase deployment expenditure) |
| Funding | Corporate capital expenditure, global infrastructure investment funds, and revolving credit facilities. |