• Asset: GreenSquareDC SYD1, 3 Brookhollow Avenue, Norwest Business Park (The Hills Shire)
• Milestone: Stage 1 operational, announced 19 October 2026
• Stage 1 capacity: 15MW, designed for high-density AI workloads with liquid-to-chip cooling
• Delivery time: eight months for the upgrade
• Tenant: Sharon AI, which has taken all of Stage 1 on a long-term contract signed in September 2026
• Hardware: about 8,200 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, with initial operations targeted for the December quarter of 2026
• Site area: about 51,867 sqm (roughly 5.2 hectares) according to the State Significant Development listing
• Next stage: a new facility of about 80MW, lodged as SSD-81928961 and currently at the Response to Submissions stage
• Backer: Partners Group, which has committed up to $1.2 billion to the GreenSquareDC platform

The Brookhollow Avenue building first opened as a data centre in 1995 and was run for years by IBM and later by its infrastructure spin-off Kyndryl. Planning material describes it as an early 1990s approval with a modest power allocation, reported at around 4MW. By modern standards that is a small, dated facility.

GreenSquareDC bought the property, including adjoining land, in an off-market campaign announced by JLL's data centre capital markets team in May 2025. The price was not disclosed. The site became the first asset of the new platform after Partners Group took over the business earlier that year.

Rather than knock the building down, GreenSquare reconfigured it. Stage 1 works covered internal changes, façade upgrades, rooftop plant, water tanks, diesel fuel storage and a new 11kV switching station to be owned by Ausgrid. A Complying Development Certificate cleared the demolition and enabling works and a separate development approval covered the 15MW first stage. Erilyan was appointed as the head contractor.

The company says reusing the existing structure cut both delivery time and embodied carbon. Its chief technology officer has described the job as a rethink of the building's layout using prefabricated systems and newer technology. The result is a facility pitched at the most power-hungry kind of computing on a site that was originally built for mainframes.

GreenSquareDC is backed by programmes managed by Partners Group, the Swiss private markets firm. When it bought the business in 2025 it committed up to $1.2 billion to build out a data centre platform in Australia. GreenSquare now talks about a pipeline of more than one gigawatt across New South Wales and Victoria with land options in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

SYD1 is the proof of concept for that pipeline. Signing a Nasdaq-listed tenant for the entire first stage before practical completion gave the project an income stream from day one. Locking in that kind of pre-commitment is what turns a speculative build into an investment-grade asset.

Sharon AI describes itself as a sovereign AI cloud provider and is an NVIDIA Cloud Partner listed on the Nasdaq. It signed for the first tranche of SYD1 capacity in September 2026. Reporting of its filings puts the deal at 15MW for an initial ten years, although neither party has published the financial terms.

The tenant mix matters for valuers. A single long-term lease to a GPU cloud operator is a different risk profile to a hyperscale lease from Microsoft or Amazon. It is a newer type of occupier with a shorter trading history. The trade-off is speed: neoclouds need capacity now and older buildings that can be re-powered quickly are one of the few ways to deliver it.

The bigger property play is the second stage. GreenSquare has lodged a State Significant Development application for the Brookhollow Avenue Data Centre Expansion, Norwest. Earlier coverage described the plan as subdividing the site and building a new multi-storey facility of about 80MW alongside the upgraded original building. Total campus capacity has been quoted at between 96MW and 110MW depending on the source.

In March 2026 the NSW Government endorsed Stage 2 for support through its Investment Delivery Authority, which is designed to speed up approvals for projects the state considers strategically important. The application does not involve a rezoning or a concurrent planning proposal, which means the land use is already permissible under existing controls.

It has not been plain sailing. The planning portal shows 59 submissions on the expansion and the project now sits at the Response to Submissions stage, the fifth of nine steps. Objections have focused on power, diesel generator fuel and the closeness of the campus to Norwest's mixed neighbourhood, which includes Norwest Marketown, a hotel, a retirement community and the Norwest Metro station.

Most of Sydney's headline data centre activity sits further west and south-west. In early October the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure approved Microsoft's 96MW data centre at 6 Honeman Close, Huntingwood, with a capital investment value of about $1.26 billion. Blacktown City Council dropped its objection after design changes and biodiversity measures.

Elsewhere, CDC's Marsden Park campus, NEXTDC's S4 at Horsley Park and AirTrunk's proposed Mamre Road campus at Kemps Creek are all at different stages of planning or construction. At the same time Goodman withdrew its 81MW Lane Cove West proposal after 374 public submissions, only nine of them supportive. The project would have been 20 metres from the nearest home.

Norwest sits between those two extremes. It is a business park rather than a heavy industrial estate, yet it already had an approved data centre use, an existing high-voltage connection and diverse fibre. That combination is scarce and it is why a five-hectare site in the Hills has become a 100MW-class campus.

The clearest lesson from 3 Brookhollow Avenue is that power and existing approvals now drive land value as much as location. A site with a substation connection, a data centre consent and room to expand can be worth far more to a data centre operator than to a conventional industrial or office buyer.

That has a few knock-on effects across Greater Sydney:

• Older technology buildings get a second life. Former bank computer rooms, telco exchanges and corporate data halls are back on operators' shopping lists, especially where the power allocation can be increased.
• Business park neighbours face more scrutiny. When a data centre expands next to offices, shops and homes the planning process gets longer and more contested, as the Norwest and Lane Cove West submissions show.
• Grid capacity becomes a selling point. Owners near new switching stations or substations may find their own sites attract interest from data centre, battery or advanced manufacturing users.
• Office conversion is a live question. Norwest has a large stock of suburban office space. Not every building has the floor loads, ceiling heights or power to suit, but owners of larger sites with spare land are being asked the question.

If you own commercial or industrial land near Norwest, Huntingwood, Eastern Creek, Kemps Creek or Marsden Park, a few practical points apply:

• Know your power. Find out the size of your existing electricity connection and how far you are from the nearest zone substation. It is often the first question an operator asks.
• Check your consent history. An old data centre, telecommunications or high-tech industrial approval can be a valuable asset in its own right.
• Package the site properly. Operators move fast and decide early. Clear site plans, power and fibre details, zoning summaries and good aerial imagery help a site make the shortlist.
• Watch neighbouring applications. A data centre next door can lift your land value or bring construction traffic, generators and noise. Making a submission early is better than reacting late.
• Get specialist advice. Data centre deals often involve options, subdivisions and long settlement periods. Valuation and agency advice from people who know the sector is worth the cost.

The immediate milestone is Sharon AI bringing its GPUs online in the final months of 2026. After that the focus shifts to the Stage 2 expansion. GreenSquare's response to the 59 submissions, the department's assessment and any conditions on power, fuel storage and noise will determine how quickly the remaining 80MW can be built.

Also watch for whether GreenSquare signs a second tenant for Stage 2 before approval, as it did with Stage 1. A pre-commitment would support the funding case and would signal how strong AI-driven demand for Sydney capacity really is. For owners of older purpose-built facilities across the city, SYD1 is now the reference point for what a reuse play can achieve.