JLL raises over $1.2b of construction financing in Northern Virginia for data center developer, The BlackChamber Group

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 15, 2025 – JLL Capital Markets announced today that it arranged over $1.2 billion in construction financing throughout 2024 on behalf of The BlackChamber Group (“BlackChamber”). The financings will facilitate the development of four hyperscale powered shell campuses located across Northern Virginia collectively totalling over 740 megawatts of capacity.

JLL worked on behalf of BlackChamber to arrange the financings as part of BlackChamber’s Northern Virginia development portfolio, which includes eight campuses with the prospective capacity to yield nearly 1.5 GW of gross power capacity across more than six million square feet.

BlackChamber was advised by JLL’s Capital Markets Debt Advisory team led by Jamie Leachman, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of the Washington, D.C. office and Drake Greer, Senior Director and member of JLL’s National Data Center Capital Markets team.

“Against a dynamic and challenging market backdrop, JLL leveraged their relationships, creativity and expertise to drive seamless and unrelenting execution with a variety of different lenders, ultimately delivering value-accretive and strategically beneficial financing solutions,” BlackChamber Managing Partner Conley Patton said.

Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world, comprising more than 4.6 GWs of power capacity as of 1H 2024. In 2024, Northern Virginia saw more than 1.3 GWs of absorption, ending the year with a vacancy rate of just 0.4%. Currently, in Northern Virginia there is more than 5.8 GWs of planned data center development.

“We are seeing incredible demand for data centers with the consistent appetite from Cloud, AI and Enterprise tenants and this in turn has created a larger focus from various capital sources,” Leachman said.

“What was once a small alternative segment of the commercial real estate industry is now a large segment of equity and debt deployments. BlackChamber’s recent construction loan closings are evidence of the diverse capital chasing data centers. Our recent closings include capital from bank balance sheets, both commercial real estate and infrastructure verticals, but also private credit vehicles funded with insurance company capital,” Greer added.

JLL’s dedicated Capital Markets group is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate and infrastructure investors and occupiers. The group’s in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether investment sales and advisory, debt advisory, equity advisory or a recapitalization. The National Data Center Capital Markets team is run by Senior Managing Director Carl Beardsley.

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The BlackChamber Group is a purpose-built, vertically integrated data center developer and SEC-registered investment adviser headquartered in Washington, DC. Designed from inception to be an optimized real estate partner for the world’s leading hyperscale technology firms in augmenting their infrastructure base, BlackChamber has extensive industry experience and a track record of successful data center development execution.