One of the world’s largest industrial landlords is making progress on its first data center in the United States.
Sydney, Australia-based developer Goodman Group has topped off its Goodman LAX01 Vernon facility, a three-story project at 3094 E Vernon Ave., about 4 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The 263,409-square-foot building will have a 50-megawatt capacity for power use designed to support high-density deployments including artificial intelligence workloads, enterprise demand and hyperscale cloud expansion.
Company executives noted the milestone signifying the completion of the building's frame as it progresses toward its scheduled opening next year.
The project signals how some of the world’s biggest warehouse owners are retooling their portfolios to capture growth from AI and cloud services.
Goodman plans to develop data centers that would use roughly 500 megawatts across multiple continents by mid-2026. The firm aims to make AI and cloud tenants in "some of the world’s most important digital hubs" a new cornerstone of its business, according to a statement from Anthony Rozic, CEO of Goodman North America.
Southern California’s data center supply has nearly doubled since 2020, but demand for top-tier space that can handle artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other high-tech industries is still outpacing availability, according to a report from JLL.
Developers across North America are contending with long lead times for utility power, rising construction costs and increasingly strict permitting standards, all of which can slow projects despite insatiable tenant demand, according to CoStar research. In some regions, there have been concerns about high use of power and water for cooling that these facilities require.
Powering up in Vernon
These new projects come as Southern California’s data center vacancy rose from 9% at the end of 2024 to 14% by mid-2025, JLL reported, as older properties become obsolete and lag behind the new supply.
Goodman broke ground on the Vernon project in March with construction partner Whiting Turner. The facility is expected to be power shell-ready by mid-2026.
The company purchased the 5.6-acre property in 2023 for $206 million, redeveloping a former meatpacking site into a data center.
The project's total power allocation is already secured, addressing one of the biggest hurdles facing data center developers today, according to Goodman. The firm did not say whether tenants have signed on for the space.
Vernon’s status as an industrial hub — with such buildings outnumbering residents by a wide margin — and a streamlined entitlement process combined to set the location apart for Goodman.
Goodman’s entry comes as other players are also expanding in Vernon. Los Angeles firm Prime Data Centers has opened a 242,495-square-foot facility nearby that quickly leased to AI firms.
Data center push
Southern California is still a relatively small player in the national data center colocation market. According to JLL, the Los Angeles region offers just 315 megawatts of existing capacity, compared with 5,000 in Northern Virginia and 1,000 in the Pacific Northwest.
Still, demand has been intensifying in the region. Net absorption hit 11 megawatts in the first half of 2025, with another 100 megawatts under construction and 300 megawatts in planning, according to JLL.
Goodman's project reflects a broader trend of global industrial developers and investors entering the data center arena to capture demand from the digital economy.
Singapore-based GIC Real Estate and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, for example, are raising $15 billion to fund data center development in the United States. In December, Australian asset manager HMC Capital paid $39 million for two vacant office buildings at 1977 Saturn St. and 1980 Saturn St. in Monterey Park that it plans to convert into a state-of-the-art data center.
Globally, Goodman says it controls a 5-gigawatt power bank across 13 cities and has nearly half of its $8.2 billion development pipeline dedicated to data center expansion.