More campuses reportedly planned around the city
Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been named as the end customer for a planned data center campus in Tucson, Arizona.
Project Blue is a 290-acre site set to host a data center campus. At least three data centers are reportedly set to be built, but the final number of buildings could be higher; some reports suggest up to 10 buildings totaling 2 million sq ft (185,805 sqm) and 600MW are planned.
Construction work on the first phase is set to run from 2026 to 2029, with the first buildings potentially going live in 2027.
While alternative investment asset company Blue Owl’s Beale Infrastructure is set to develop the campus, city documents shared with a local news outlet have outed AWS as the end customer.
Arizona Luminaria had requested emails and internal county memos that include the words “Project Blue,” “data center,” or other terms related to energy use for the proposed project.
The data center has been under discussion by local officials since at least 2023, according to emails between county administrators and real estate investment firm Diamond Ventures. The county has been under a non-disclosure agreement since at least June 2024.
According to one county supervisor, the memo naming AWS as the company behind Project Blue should have redacted details, including the name of the company. Amazon declined to comment to Arizona Luminaria.
Earlier this year, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 in favor of rezoning the 290-acre land parcel from ‘rural homestead’ to ‘light industrial’. The parcel is then set to be sold to San Francisco-based Beale Infrastructure, a data center developer backed by Blue Owl.
Chair of the board of supervisors, Rex Scott, told the publication that he had “absolutely no second thoughts at all” about his vote to approve the land sale.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero told the publication that she did not know the company behind Project Blue.
The parcel, owned by Pima County, is currently vacant and is otherwise known as the Southeast Employment and Logistics Center. It is located immediately north of the Pima County Fairgrounds in Pima County, which contains the city of Tucson.
Tucson city council is set to vote on annexation and rezoning requests related to the project in August.
A new opposition group, No Desert Data Center, is attempting to mobilize residents against the project over its water use and potential impact on the area.
The site is reportedly set to use drinking water for its cooling systems for at least the first two years of operation until it can switch to using treated wastewater once a new water line is completed.
“Amazon does not care about our desert. Amazon does not care about our water, our wildlife, our community. Amazon does not care,” the group said on Instagram this week.
The Pima County project for the development notes two more sites are being considered in conjunction with Project Blue, with one potentially within the Tucson city limits. The ‘secondary project’ could total up to 700MW at full build-out.
A report from Tuscon.com also notes that these two campuses from Beale are in the early stages of development, with one potentially coming to the Marana area northwest of Tucson.
Most of Arizona's data center market is in Phoenix, though Tucson, where the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is located, has a small market of its own with operators including Ark Data Centers, TECfusions, Lumen, and FirstDigital.
