A building permit application has been filed for a new data center project in Cedar Rapids, but the project is significantly smaller in scope than the two hyperscale data center projects already under construction on the city’s southwest side.
According to Cedar Rapids online records, a building permit for the new, 98,695-square-foot data center facility was approved June 22. The new facility will be located at 1515 33rd Ave. SW, east of 18th Street SW and south of the 4.5-megawatt Alliant Energy community solar garden.
The site is owned by an entity identified as CLOP LLC of Cedar Rapids, and is being developed by Oppidan Connect, which opened a 60,000-square-foot, 5-megawatt facility in Des Moines in 2024.
A construction schedule for the Cedar Rapids project wasn’t indicated in online records. The project has a total listed valuation of just over $101 million.
The facility will draw up to 10 megawatts of power, according to the building permit.
At less than 100,000 square feet, the CLOP LLC facility is much smaller than the 612-acre QTS data center complex under construction at 6200 76th Ave. SW, which is expected to have a total economic impact of up to $10 billion, and the 414-acre Google data center project at Edgewood Road and 76th Avenue SW. Both are situated within the Big Cedar Industrial Center, just north of the Eastern Iowa Airport.
The new facility will be the third data center project in Cedar Rapids in recent years, but the metro area has been home to other data centers – of varying scales – for more than a decade.
According to DataCenterMap, a 4-megawatt, 12,000-square-foot data center owned by Waterloo-based Enseva opened at 755 Metzger Drive in Hiawatha, west of Hawkeye Drive, in October 2012. And a 10,000-square-foot ark data center opened its doors at 5055 REC Dr. in Marion in 2008 under its original name, Involta. The colocation firm rebranded and transitioned to ark data centers in May 2024.
The same site indicates that there are currently 112 data centers in 14 markets in Iowa.
