An unnamed Fortune 20 company appears to be planning to build a computer chip testing facility in Colorado Springs.

In a July news release, Broadstone Net Lease, a Victor, N.Y.-based development firm, announced it will develop an “approximately 112,000- square-foot advanced technology facility” in Colorado for a Fortune 20 company. The release did not specify Colorado Springs.

Documents submitted to the city by the land owner and a consulting firm show plans to build a graphics processing unit (GPU) test laboratory to be used by a “global technology firm” on land south of the El Pomar Youth Sports Park. The lots at 3819 Janitell Road formerly housed a golf course and a vineyard, the former shutting down in 2009.

The property owner is ERCOR Janitell Road, according to documents sent to the city. Its principal address — 207 Highpoint Drive, Suite 300, Victor, N.Y. — is the same as Broadstone Net Lease, according to records obtained by The Gazette.

Broadstone did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Gazette.

The property owners in documents submitted to the city and those listed in the El Paso County Assessor’s Office property search database are different. The companies involved did not clarify the reason for this discrepancy in time for this story’s publication.

In 2011, Colarelli Construction pitched a $1 billion corporate data center campus in the area, which could have created between 400 and 600 jobs, The Gazette previously reported. Seen as something that could “transform the city,” only one data center, T5@Colorado, has been built to date.

Current plans show the latest evolution of the property, a graphics-processing-unit chip testing facility going up just north of the existing data center.

The city gave it the name “Project Primestone” in its rapid response certification, meaning the project is qualified to receive expedited plan reviews. City planning documents refer to it as the Vineyards Research Park.

The Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC also declined to comment on the development, saying it does not comment on ongoing projects.

The project statement, a brief overview of the project and facility use, envisions a pair of 110,000-square-foot buildings to be used by a “global technology company” as a graphics processing unit test laboratory.

“Before any new chip generation reaches the market, engineering teams put pre-production units through months of benchmarking, burn-in, and thermal and reliability testing,” the statement said. “A research and development laboratory or industrial testing classification best describes this proposed use.”

While the July release from Broadstone did not name the company involved, it did specify it was a Fortune 20 company. A Fortune 20 company is one of the top 20 largest companies in the United States by revenue, according to Fortune Magazine. It has published the Fortune 500 list for the past 72 years.

There are only six tech companies listed in the Fortune 20 by Fortune magazine: Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet (Google).

Broadstone’s CEO John Morgane called the customer “one of the world’s premier companies” in the news release.

“The selected site offers significant strategic advantages, including proximity to key customers, access to affordable and reliable power, and a well-established regional technology ecosystem,” the release said. “The development will be delivered as a powered shell with substantial completion and rent commencement anticipated by March 2027.”

The project statement submitted to the city said the project will use a closed-loop cooling system and feature rack-based equipment that comes and goes as different GPU models are tested. This implies the GPUs are enterprise-grade equipment and not the kind consumers can buy at a Best Buy or Microcenter.

There are only two major tech companies that produce rack-mounted GPUs: Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. The latter is not in the Fortune 20.

Many companies that use data centers — which are concentrations of rack mounted computers and GPUs in one building — buy Nvidia and AMD GPUs rather than making their own.

The new development is a far cry from the original use of the land, which served the region as the Pikes Peak Vineyards winery and the Vineyard Golf Course. In 2010, Vince Colarelli, the founder and leader of Colarelli Construction, sought to build a data center park.

Old planning documents for the project envisioned five data centers ranging in size from about 70,000 square feet to 110,000 square feet.

By 2016, Atlanta-based T5 Data Centers broke ground on the first data center, which continues to operate today.

Plans appear to still be in place to build a second data center near the first. When the existing building neared completion in 2013, T5 shared a news release envisioning a 100-megawatt operation in the 64 acres it owned at the Vineyards.

Amid the AI boom, data centers have stirred controversy both nationally and locally. In Colorado Springs, Project Taurus, a proposed 50-megawatt artificial intelligence data center, has sparked a fiery debate around the benefits and risks of data centers.

The project statement, though, flatly said: “The Vineyards Research Park Subdivision project is not a data center. Nothing in this building serves an outside customer, nor is this a 24-hour facility.”

It is not clear how many total jobs it would create, but the project statement said those that do come will be “high-earning engineering and technician roles.”

The project received a rapid response certificate from the city in May. It does not mean the city takes shortcuts, however, and the project still must go through every step of the development process, city staff said.

The project met the minimum requirements of a rapid response designation:

• Be a primary employer (a company that generates over 50% of their revenue from outside El Paso County, which brings new dollars into the local economy).
• Create 10 or more full-time jobs.
• $1 million or more in capital investment.

Project Primestone will exceed all minimum criteria, the city said, though also declined to name the company.

The site has “been marketed by us as a technology, manufacturing and innovation site” for many years, the Chamber said, but did not offer further specifics.