The manager of Elite UK REIT has submitted a planning application for a data centre development site at Peel Park, Blackpool.
This comes after the manager received positive feedback from the local authority during the pre-planning phase.
The site as well as the existing buildings beside it are located on 15.65 hectares of freehold land. It benefits from a subsea cable that reached landfall in Blackpool in 2022, connecting Blackpool to Dublin and extending to Europe as well as the US.
The site is less than 5 km to Blackpool town centre and less than an hour to Liverpool and Manchester via major motorways.
The REIT manager has secured power supply sufficient for the proposed data centre facility and is in discussions to bring renewable power supplies to the site from wind power infrastructure nearby, enabling the delivery of a sustainably-powered data centre.
The move follows the expansion of the REIT’s investment mandate in April, when it has identified several high-yield assets within its portfolio for strategic repositioning, says the REIT manager's CEO Joshua Liaw.
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“One key asset is Peel Park, which we believe has significant potential to be transformed into a cutting-edge data centre campus. Its strategic location offers low latency and reduced emissions, making it highly attractive to data centre operators and end-users,” he adds.
The REIT manager is evaluating a number of strategic options for Peel Park, which may include potential partnerships with leading data centre operators.
Units in Elite UK REIT closed 1 pence higher or 3.22% up on Oct 2 at 32 pence.