Goodman to Invest $722M Developing 90MW ‘Project Mars’ Data Centre in Sydney

Australian builder Goodman Group has filed for an environmental assessment of a 90-megawatt data centre project in Sydney, with plans to invest A$1.2 billion ($722 million) developing the facility.

The scheme involves the redevelopment of Goodman’s existing four-warehouse industrial park at 12 Mars Road in the northwest suburb of Lane Cove, according to documents submitted to the New South Wales state government. Dubbed Project Mars, the new complex would comprise two data centre buildings with a gross floor area of 18,829 square metres (202,674 square feet).

“Key assessment issues for consideration are likely to be bulk and scale due to the necessary height and floor space ratio of the facility,” Goodman head of planning Guy Smith said in a letter to state officials. “Noise and air quality impacts will also be key considerations.”

The proposed transformation of Transtech Business Park comes after Goodman raised more than A$4 billion in fresh equity two months ago to help meet the ASX-listed group’s goal of having 500MW of new data centre projects underway within the next 16 months.

Shed Removal

Goodman intends to demolish Transtech’s four “dated” warehouse buildings and perform an excavation of the 33,559 square metre site, with the finished project expected to include 2,562 square metres of office space and 4,779 square metres of landscaping.

Project Mars will create about 500 jobs for the construction and fit-out and 30 jobs for the operational data centre, Goodman said in a pre-development application.

Sydney-based Goodman has said its data centre push is aimed at meeting greater demand for digital infrastructure driven by cloud-based technologies, data migration, and Al and machine learning. The proceeds of the February equity placement are meant to provide Goodman with greater flexibility to pursue growth opportunities while reducing the group’s short-term debt load.

“Goodman is well positioned to maximise the significant data centre demand across our markets,” CEO Greg Goodman said ahead of the placement. “The additional funds raised provide us with greater financial and operational flexibility to manage the next phase of growth.”

California Groundbreaking

Goodman boasts a global power bank of 5 gigawatts across 13 key cities, including 2.6GW already secured and 2.4GW in advanced stages of procurement. The secured power consists of 0.5GW stabilised, 0.4GW in progress and 1.7GW in the pipeline.

By June 2026, the group expects to have started development of new powered shells and fully fitted facilities for 0.5GW worth of data centre projects in Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam and Hong Kong with an estimated end value greater than A$10 billion.

Data centres now make up 46 percent of the warehouse specialist’s current work in progress across 68 projects with an estimated end value totalling A$13 billion and a forecast yield on cost of 6.7 percent.

In October of last year, Goodman completed a 50MW data centre in Hong Kong’s Tsuen Wan West area for Shanghai-based client GDS Holdings. Last month the group began construction of LAX01 Vernon, a 49.5MW data centre in southern California.

Sitting on a 5.6 acre (2.3 hectare) site, the three-level facility near Los Angeles is set to provide an estimated 32MW of critical IT capacity once fully fitted out. The data centre will be powered shell ready by mid-2026, the developer said.