A local government in northern Germany has started construction work on a new data center.

The Rostock government last week broke ground on a new municipal facility in Toitenwinkel.

“We are proud and happy to have reached today’s groundbreaking ceremony as a milestone together with the partners involved. The new data center is an extremely important piece of the puzzle for our city’s digital infrastructure. It ensures reliable IT structures and supports the further expansion of digital administrative services. The data center is thus not only a technical project, but a clear commitment to the digital sovereignty of our municipality,” said Dr. Chris von Wrycz Rekowski, senator for finance, digitalization, and order in Rostock.

According to Datacenter Insider, the 300kW site will feature 90 sqm (969 sq ft) of white space across two data halls.

The site will include an on-site solar system and make its waste heat available.

The government said the facility will secure and modernize the city administration’s IT infrastructure, as well as municipal companies and other facilities in the future.

The €6 million ($6.9m) building is financed from the city’s own funds. PBIT systems and the DC Datacenter Group are developing the building for the municipality.

The shell is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2026, with the overall completion planned for September 2026. Migration of the IT systems of the city administration is to begin next year.

While it will own the building, the city itself will not offer IT services. The site will be managed by Deutsche Telekom, and the city will make the facility available through which external third parties can also obtain IT services.

Rostock, officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock, is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the north of the country.

A gigawatt data center campus in Rostock?

Rostock is not currently a major data center hub. According to DataCenterMap, only euNetworks operates a facility in the area. However, this could be about to change.

Local press, including Tagesschau and NDR, reports that the municipality of Dummerstorf, to the south of Rostock, is currently negotiating with a German investor about the potential to develop a 30-hectare 1.2GW data center campus in the local industrial park.

Officials have confirmed talks are ongoing, but have not named the interested party. NDR suggests it could be European investment firm Freo Group.

WebPioneer suggests talks about the development have been ongoing under the codename Beowulf.

Freo Group is an international real estate and private markets investment manager. Since 1996, the company has invested and/or developed more than 60 projects totalling more than 2.4 million square metres across office, retail, hotel, industrial, and multi-use developments in Europe and the US. The company is not known for its data center developments.

Glasfaser Ruhr plans data center in Bochum

Elsewhere in Germany, municipal fiber provider Glasfaser Ruhr is planning to develop a new data center outside Dortmund.

First reported by WAZ, the fiber firm is set to start work on another facility around Bochum. According to a public tender, the company aims to develop a single-story modular facility able to host at least 235 racks, at densities of up to 10kW per rack.

Bochum is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, between Essen and Dortmund.

Owned by local municipal utility Stadtwerke Bochum, Glasfaser Ruhr offers fiber, networking, and connectivity services, as well as colocation. The company currently operates one data center in Bochum and another in nearby Herne.