Switch has gobbled up more land in Southern Nevada.
The data-center owner recently bought 53.6 acres in the southern Las Vegas Valley for nearly $86.2 million, property records show. The spread is located along the east side of Decatur Boulevard between Serene Avenue and Silverado Ranch Boulevard.
The bulk purchase was recorded with the county last month.
This followed its purchase of 300-plus acres in North Las Vegas’ Apex Industrial Park for more than $180 million combined in recent months, all while Switch has borrowed billions of dollars over the past few years to fuel its growth.
All told, Las Vegas-based Switch has stockpiled land and funding amid America’s heated growth of digital storage space, a rapid industry increase that has rankled communities around the country.
Switch declined to comment on its latest land acquisition.
Pushback across U.S. to industry growth
Data centers are basically warehouses filled with computer servers and other gear needed to store clients’ data, and construction has been spreading fast in the U.S. amid the rapid development of, and heavy investments in, artificial intelligence.
Overall, the U.S. had more than 4,100 active data centers and nearly 2,800 others that were under construction or announced, according to a report in December from tech advocacy group the American Edge Project and the Technology Councils of North America.
But amid fears that employers will shed waves of white-collar workers and replace them with AI systems — and concerns by environmental groups and others over data centers’ effects on surrounding communities — there has been widespread pushback around the U.S. to the rapidly growing industry.
The energy-hungry facilities typically rely on water to help cool their servers, an issue that has drawn increased attention locally as Southern Nevada grapples with a decades-long drought and a deeply shrunken Lake Mead, the reservoir that supplies about 90 percent of the Las Vegas area’s water.
Since 2024, a ban on evaporative cooling systems was finalized in Southern Nevada, effectively eliminating the possibility of building data centers that are more water-intensive.
Locally, the data-center industry is all but synonymous with Switch, a homegrown company founded by Rob Roy with a cluster of several big facilities in the southwest valley area.
Last summer, Switch announced that it had borrowed $20 billion since 2024 to support the growth of its campuses around the country, reduce its cost of capital, and fully retire the bank debt incurred in the buyout that took the company private.
It also said last fall that it had borrowed around $3.5 billion through bond sales, and it announced this spring that it secured a $2.6 billion syndicated letter of credit and had raised nearly $770 million through another bond sale.
Growth plans
Switch has been building so-called AI factories in the southwest valley. As the company previously explained, these are smaller than its typical data centers in Las Vegas but are more densely packed with computing power, as they are designed to power AI systems.
The company has also laid the foundation for waves of new data centers in North Las Vegas, buying hundreds of acres in the remote Apex Industrial Park through two separate transactions.
Plus, Switch recently announced plans to develop a 382-acre data-center campus outside Pittsburgh, saying the sprawling complex will serve customers in the Eastern U.S. and join its portfolio of facilities in Nevada, Texas, Michigan and Georgia.
Meanwhile, Switch has also drawn up plans to expand its existing campus in the southwest valley.
Clark County commissioners are scheduled Wednesday to consider a proposal by Switch for a 56,788-square-foot data center on 9 acres along the north side of Warm Springs Road just west of Decatur Boulevard.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
