Wednesday · April 29, 2026

Beale Infrastructure (Blue Owl) Breaks Ground on $3B De Soto KS Hyperscale Datacenter — Flint Commerce Center Site

confirmed Importance 7/10 ~4 min read 3 sources 1 actor

Beale Infrastructure — a portfolio company of Blue Owl Capital’s Real Assets platform — broke ground on April 29, 2026 on a $3.1 billion hyperscale data center campus at Flint Commerce Center, De Soto, KS (northwest corner of 103rd Street and Edgerton Road). The project, developed through the project entity Mount Sunflower Properties LLC, sits on land within the 285–370-acre Flint Commerce Center site where Flint Development serves as master developer. The unnamed technology company tenant is described by the project attorney as among “the strongest, most financially profitable companies in the world.”

What Happened / Key Facts

The De Soto City Council approved the Development Agreement with Mount Sunflower LLC and a Resolution of Intent for IRB-based incentives in August 2025. Incentives include a 20-year sales tax exemption on construction materials and equipment (Kansas SB 98, 2025), a 10-year property tax abatement per building, and franchise fee reductions on power usage. IRB authorization ceiling: up to $50 billion. Minimum developer investment: $700 million within 7 years.

Project scope: four datacenter buildings, approximately 285,000 sqft each (~1.14M sqft total Phase 1; some sources indicate expansion planning to 2.9M sqft total). Phase 1 targeted completion 2027–2029. Full build-out through approximately 2035.

Beale Infrastructure was launched in 2024 as part of Blue Owl Capital’s digital infrastructure strategy. Blue Owl acquired IPI Partners (digital infrastructure fund manager, $11B+ AUM) in October 2024 for approximately $1 billion to anchor this strategy. Beale focuses on developing data centers in partnership with utilities and local governments. Executive team: Julian Kudritzki (COO; formerly Ada Infrastructure, Microsoft Azure Infrastructure); Scott Robertson (Chief Delivery Officer; formerly Google North America Central datacenter delivery); Courtney Jolicoeur (CFO; formerly Amazon, VEREIT Inc., Unico Properties); Holly Adams (SVP Energy; formerly Pattern Energy); Tony Burkart (SVP Public Policy; formerly Google Economic Development).

Legal representation for the De Soto project: Polsinelli Law Firm.

Why This Event Matters

This groundbreaking is the structural completion of the Flint Development dual-overlap pattern: the same master developer (Flint, founded 2020, Devin Schuster ex-Newmark Zimmer) whose Kansas City–area industrial portfolio supplied a DHS detention warehouse in January 2026 now hosts a Blue Owl hyperscale datacenter campus on its Kansas land.

More significantly, the event creates a Flint ∩ Blue Owl overlap at the site level: Blue Owl sold the Tremont PA warehouse to DHS for $119.5M on January 29, 2026 (7,500-bed ICE conversion, WEXMAC-TITUS) AND through its portfolio company Beale is co-developing the De Soto datacenter site that Flint controls. Two confirmed WEXMAC-TITUS sellers (Flint and Blue Owl) are therefore co-present on the same real estate campus within the same fiscal quarter as their respective detention warehouse dispositions.

This is distinct from the Blue Owl asset-layer pattern documented elsewhere (Blue Owl’s own Real Assets / Digital Infrastructure Fund III holding detention and datacenter assets in different vehicles) — here the connection is at the project-partner level: Blue Owl’s portfolio company is the tenant-side developer on Flint’s master-developer land.

Broader Context

The De Soto site also houses Flint Commerce Center Building C (completed December 2024), where Panasonic Energy leases 509,760 sqft (brokered by Newmark Zimmer’s Mark C. Long, John F. Hassler, and Scott E. Bluhm). The Panasonic lease supports Panasonic’s nearby $4B lithium-ion battery plant. When queried in February 2026 about whether the Panasonic building would be sold to the government, Newmark Zimmer CEO Mark C. Long stated: “Flint has no current plans to lease or sell this facility to the government.”

Blue Owl separately partnered with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) in 2025 to launch a new data center platform — whether QIA has any LP position in the Beale De Soto project is unconfirmed.

Research Gaps

  • Identity of the unnamed technology company tenant
  • Whether QIA or other sovereign wealth funds are LPs in the Beale De Soto vehicle
  • The specific Blue Owl fund vehicle (ODI III or successor) for the De Soto datacenter investment

Sources & Citations

[1] Blue Owl's Beale to Break Ground on $3B Data Center Campus — Commercial Property Executive · 2026-04 Tier 1
[2] City Council Supports Data Center at Flint Commerce Center — De Soto, KS official site · Aug 28, 2025 Tier 1
[3] De Soto advances $3.1B data center project near Panasonic plant — Johnson County Post · Aug 26, 2025 Tier 1
Tiers Tier 1 court records & gov docs · Tier 2 established outlets · Tier 3 regional & specialty press · Tier 4 opinion or single-source. Methodology →
Cite this entry
The Cascade Ledger. “Beale Infrastructure (Blue Owl) Breaks Ground on $3B De Soto KS Hyperscale Datacenter — Flint Commerce Center Site.” The Capture Cascade Timeline, April 29, 2026. https://capturecascade.org/event/2026-04-29--beale-blue-owl-breaks-ground-de-soto-ks-hyperscale-datacenter-flint-commerce-center/