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- Data Center View - October 1, 2026 - Blue Owl plans data center REIT with $6.5B of its own assets
Data Center View - October 1, 2026 - Blue Owl plans data center REIT with $6.5B of its own assets
Loudoun County moves to pause data center applications. Bill to strip opportunity zone tax breaks from data centers. Equinix data center spills more than 5,000 gallons of diesel. North America data center trend H1 2026. Two new data center deals.
Matt H
October 01, 2026
Good morning. Welcome to Data Center View! In each issue, we cover the top stories, trends, and listings in the data center sector.
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NEWS ROUNDUP
MARKET: Blue Owl plans data center REIT seeded with $6.5 billion of its own assets. Blue Owl Capital plans to take public a REIT focused on data centers and seed it with about $6.5 billion of its own data center assets. Blue Owl's REIT would follow a model similar to Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust, which raised $2 billion in its IPO, but unlike Blackstone's blind-pool structure, Blue Owl's investors would buy into a REIT anchored by the firm's existing assets. The sources said details of the REIT and its IPO could change as deliberations continue.
DEVELOPMENT: Loudoun County moves to pause data center applications for 12 months. Loudoun County's Board of Supervisors has voted 7-1, with one abstention, to direct county staff to prepare a resolution that would halt consideration of legislative data center applications, such as rezonings and special exceptions, for up to 12 months.
LEGISLATION: Bill to strip opportunity zone tax breaks from data centers. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced the No Tax Breaks for Data Centers Act, which would bar investors from using the federal Opportunity Zone program's tax breaks to buy or build data centers. The program gives taxpayers tax benefits for qualifying investments in low-income communities, and Hawley's office cited a report finding that between 14% and 17% of U.S. data centers have been or will be built in qualifying opportunity zones.
ENVIRONMENT: Equinix data center spills more than 5,000 gallons of diesel in river. More than 5,000 gallons of No. 2 diesel fuel was discharged from a storage tank outside Equinix's NY2 data center in Secaucus, NJ, with some of the fuel flowing into a tributary of the Hackensack River, and state officials say the spill has been contained while cleanup continues.
DATA CENTER DEALMAKERS - PANELISTS ANNOUNCED
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ONE MORE THING
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