A 400 MW Data Center Pitched for the Navy’s NAVWAR Campus

The Navy’s own project records set the frame. Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NAVWAR, sits on the roughly 70.3-acre Old Town Campus of Naval Base Point Loma, between Pacific Highway and Interstate 5 in San Diego. On January 9, 2024 the Navy selected Manchester/Edgemoor LLC as potential master developer and entered exclusive negotiations, naming Clark Construction Group as design-builder, HKS for the government facilities, HOK as master planner for the private development and Dealy Development for entitlements. In an update dated October 8, 2026, the Navy says it is updating the 2021 Draft Environmental Impact Statement with site-specific details from Manchester/Edgemoor, expects to publish a Revised Draft EIS in 2027, and will issue a Final EIS and Record of Decision after public comment. Redevelopment, the Navy says, depends on it selecting a leasing alternative in that Record of Decision.

What changed this week is reported, not filed. On October 15, Voice of San Diego reported, citing correspondence with San Diego Community Power, that Manchester Financial Group had explored a 400 megawatt data center on the site, phased in 100 megawatt increments every six months, with no committed tenant, a power quote of up to $0.11 per kilowatt hour, and on-site backup power that could include natural gas. In an email reported by KPBS on October 16, Manchester president and CEO Ted Eldredge said a data center is one of several uses under consideration, alongside a hotel, medical center, university campus, defense industry campus and life science facility, and that “there are no negotiations underway and no agreements in place.” The same day, Rep. Scott Peters, whose district includes the campus, said he opposes a data center there. PSV has not seen the underlying correspondence, and the Navy’s public records do not mention a data center.

This is a land-use contest over a 70.3-acre infill parcel beside Interstate 5, and it has unusual rules. KPBS reports that because the land is federally owned, the project would not need city of San Diego permits, and because the Navy would trade a ground lease for a new NAVWAR facility rather than seek funding, it needs no congressional appropriation. That leaves the Navy’s NEPA process and the utility as the real gates. The project summary the team gave the city in 2024, as reported, described thousands of apartments, hotels and retail, so the residential and hospitality supply that nearby owners have been underwriting for years is now uncertain in both directions.

The scale is the second signal. By PSV arithmetic, 400 megawatts at full continuous load is 9,600 megawatt hours a day, which at the top of the reported $0.11 quote computes to about $1.06 million of energy a day, consistent with the reported estimate of more than $1 million. Four 100 megawatt phases at six-month intervals would put full load about 18 months after the first phase energizes. A developer that, by Eldredge’s own reported account, has never built a data center is pricing power on a site next to a downtown, which is the pattern behind the speculative interconnection requests utilities and regulators across the country are now trying to screen out.

The tool is a site-claim ledger built for federal and military land. Inputs are the agency’s project site and announcements, every Federal Register notice for the environmental review, the Draft EIS alternatives, the developer solicitation record, the utility’s public interconnection or large-load filings, and dated press statements from the developer and elected officials. Each claim, a megawatt figure, a use, a schedule, a tenant, goes in one row with its source, whether it is filed, quoted or reported, and the decision it still needs, such as a Record of Decision, a lease or a utility study.

The output is a one-page status memo for any asset within a mile of the site: what is decided, what is proposed, and the next public date that could change it, here the Revised Draft EIS comment period in 2027. The reviewer is the asset manager or acquisitions lead for the nearby holding, and the approval gate is that a reported use never moves a rent, absorption or exit assumption until it appears as an alternative in the Navy’s environmental record.