The American private equity company Blackstone will become the owner of a new data center to be built in Groningen. This Friday, the municipalities of Hogeland and Eemsdelta and the province of Groningen agreed to the sale of government land on the common site of the Port of Groningen Seaports, for approximately 9 million euros. The buyer is Blackstone subsidiary QTS, a company that mainly owns data centers in the United States and that was acquired last year for about 6 billion euros by the venture investor Blackstone, one of the largest private investors in the world, hit the Netherlands last year. discredited for tax avoidance.
The construction of new data centers in the Netherlands is a sensitive issue, partly due to the recently canceled construction of a data center for Meta (Facebook) in Zeewolde. Partly to prevent social unrest in Zeewolde, Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Housing, CDA) decided to only allow data centers in the municipalities of Hollands Kroon (Middenmeer) and Hogeland (Eemshaven), where data centers are already located and where there is still space. The land that is now being sold is located in Hogeland, in the port area of Groningen Seaports.
Abuses and chaos
The arrival of data centers in Groningen is a sensitive issue, because everything went wrong administratively over the past decade when Google came to Eemshaven. This led to abuses and chaos, a commission of inquiry led by public administration expert Marcel Boogers concluded at the end of May. Windmill rights were given away by Groningen Seaports in a secret agreement, and the port authority bought and sold land while it had no mandate to do so. On Thursday evening, an extra meeting was arranged between the Provincial Council and the various municipal councils involved about those research conclusions, with researcher Boogers as a guest. Many questions, for example whether criminal offenses were involved, are still open after that meeting.
Also read: Chaos around the purchase of ‘Googlegronden’ in Eemshaven
The biggest errors in the Google file were caused by Groningen Seaports selling land to Google against its own guidelines instead of leasing it. The basic principle of Groningen Seaports is that land will in principle remain in the hands of the municipalities and the province – which together as ‘Port of Groningen Seaports’ are the sole shareholder of the privatized port company Groningen Seaports. Partly in that light, it is all the more remarkable that the land has now been sold to a Blackstone company.
Deputy IJzebrand Rijzebol (CDA), also chairman of the executive board of the Groningen Seaports Port Authority, confirmed in April that land is in principle not sold to companies. Only in exceptional cases, if there are good reasons for this, can land be sold instead of leased.
With Friday’s approval to sell land to QTS/Blackstone, another exceptional situation is created, just like with Google. The board of the Port Authority agreed because QTS previously made sale a condition of the planned investment of 800 million euros associated with the data center.