Vantage initially plans four buildings totalling 2.6M square feet

Plans for the data center campus proposed by Vantage Data Centers for Port Washington’s far north side show four data center buildings totaling roughly 2.56 million square feet on 672 acres.

The two largest buildings, each about 719,000 square feet, would be built on the south and east sides of the property.

The two smaller buildings, each about 560,000 square feet, would be built on the north and northwest sides of the property, creating a triangular campus.

Each of the buildings would have a dedicated parking lot with between 150 and 200 stalls, as well as generators, transformers, utility buildings and mechanical dry chillers. 

An operations center off Highland Drive at the far north end of the site would be about 6,500 square feet and serve as the main entry to the campus.

A second entrance would be on the southeast side of the property, and a spur from the Ozaukee Interurban Trail would allow employees of the data center to bike to work.

There would also be a roughly 50,000 square foot warehouse on the southeast side of the campus.

The nearest building is about 385 feet from I-43, and about 1,200 feet from the Ozaukee Interurban Trail.

The property being developed is bordered by Highland Drive on the south, I-43 on the east, the Ozaukee Interurban Trail on the west and is about 800 feet south of Lake Drive on the north.

The site will be surrounded by an 8-foot decorative metal security fence and landscaped with more than 2,345 trees — 1,959 deciduous trees and 386 evergreens — as well as open spaces, including wetlands and existing wooded areas around the perimeter.

The city’s Design Review Board on Tuesday recommended approval of the plans, which will be considered by the Plan Commission when it meets at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21.

“We have an intended end user in mind,” Christopher Welch, Vantage Data Center’s director of preconstruction for North America, told the board, noting the campus was designed with that user in mind.

The campus will be used as a machine learning and training facility for artificial intelligence, Welch said. 

Groundbreaking is expected to be held in September with the campus completed by the first half of 2029, he said.

The campus, Welch said, is designed to blend into the area as much as possible.

“The idea is not to make the buildings stand out,” he said. “In this location, we feel it’s appropriate to blend into the surrounding area.”

In addition to significant setbacks from the roads, an eight to 12-foot berm and landscaping will largely hide the campus, Andrew Uttan, associate principal at the civil engineering firm Langen, said.

“You’re not going to really see it,” he said. “If you’re driving down I-43, you may see glimpses of it.”

While data center buildings in some communities have office-like appearances with glassy facades, these buildings will not, Bob Harris, the city’s director of planning and development, noted.

“This is not an office headquarters,” he said. “This is a functioning data center.”

Next to each data center building will be  smaller central utility structures, and next to those will be the dry chillers.

The data center buildings will be about 35 feet tall with the accessory rooftop infrastructure hitting about 43 feet, according to Harris. Transformers will dot the perimeter of the buildings.

The tallest structures will be the dry chiller platforms, which will be about 65 feet, Welch said.

“They’re very substantial,” he said.

Fire Chief Joe DeBoer, a member of the board, asked if there is an alternative to the chillers that would be less noticeable. 

“It’s going to be a minute before a 65-foot dry chiller is hidden by a tree,” DeBoer said, adding that the other structures on the property are low in comparison.

There aren’t alternatives that would allow Vantage to have the same limits on water use, Welch said, adding those would also require a larger footprint.

The campus will use 1.3 gigawatts of power, Rabih Matar, director of new site development for the Port project, told the board.

A large electrical substation will be created on the north end of the site to bring that power to the buildings, and DeBoer asked what that will look like.

“I think you guys have done the best you can (with the design), but if you slap a big, ugly substation in there you’ve defeated what you’re trying to do,” he said.

Tracye Herrington, Vantage’s vice president of new site development, said they aren’t building the substation.

“By design, it’s going to be pretty ugly,” she said. “We don’t particularly care for that design either.”

  Welch told the board that Vantage will submit a traffic analysis for the city to review.