Dying malls can be converted to data centers

As data centers become larger, more urbanized and in greater demand due to the increasing needs for AI infrastructure, we will likely see more retail-to-data center conversions. And that includes the dying malls, which is nothing new.

For example, as early as 2008, Eastgate Consumer Mall began converting to a an office park and data center owned by Lifeline Data Centers, LLC (Indianapolis, Ind.). Between 2012 and 2013, AiNET converted a former Boscov's Department Store, LLC at Marley Station Mall into its CyberNAP data center. And currently, the Landover Mall property (Prince George’s County, Md.) — demolished years earlier — is under consideration as a data center campus called Brightseat Tech Park with potential groundbreaking in 2026.

Malls work as data center conversion for four reasons:
• They are large (500,000 – 1,200,000 sq. ft.)
• They have large column spacing
• They are located within central utility corridors
• They have ample parking, where one can build power substations and generators

A dead 900,000 sq. ft. mall can support ~40–80 MW traditional cloud data center or ~25–50 MW AI / high-density workloads. Power availability is usually the real constraint.

As of last year, U.S. data center inventory accounted for ~180–200 million sq. ft. Within five years, +100–150 million sq. ft. of additional space for data centers is required.

Data centers of various sizes will be built between 2026 and 2030:
• Small data center: ~50,000–100,000 sq. ft.
• Mid-scale colocation: ~200,000–400,000 sq. ft.
• Hyperscale / AI campus: 500,000–1,500,000+ sq. ft.

However, power availability matters more than square footage, so power generating sources are needed whether data centers are mall conversions or they are built on greenfield.

Stargate Project, a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank Group Corp., with support from the U.S. government in Abilene, Texas (180 miles west of Dallas) is being built on greenfield. It will have a mighty capacity of 1.2 gigawatts with its own gas power plant. The Stargate site—spanning 900 acres is larger than New York City’s Central Park.