SERVICE / SITE ADVISORY
Retrofit Site Acquisition Advisory
The brief in motion
Retrofit Site Advisory: Dead Industry, Live Power
The scarce input is not land or capital
It is permitted power. New grid interconnection commonly takes years, which is why a greenfield AI data center runs toward a 36-month timeline from commitment to first load. Industrial sites that have gone dark, malls, factories, and retired power plants in the 250MW to 1GW class, frequently retain the interconnection agreements, substation infrastructure, and industrial permitting from their former lives. Acquiring one and retrofitting it into an AI-mission-specific, liquid-cooled data center targets first load in 12 to 18 months instead of 36.
The pattern is already public
Dead industry is already becoming AI capacity. A Somerset, NY coal plant closed in 2020 is now TeraWulf's 500 MW Lake Mariner AI and HPC campus, with new buildings completed in under a year. Pennsylvania's largest coal plant, Homer City, is becoming a 4.5 GW gas-powered AI campus that kept its transmission lines, substations, and water. A paper mill in Lufkin, Texas, closed since 2007 and bought for $11M at auction, is scaling from 175 MW in 2026 to 1.1 GW by 2028 as Project Lufkin. None of these sites were valued for their power when they were industrial. All of them were repriced once someone did.
What the advisory covers
Site qualification screens candidate properties for power capacity, power-rights status, structure, water, and location fundamentals. Power-rights diligence confirms that interconnection agreements and capacity are live, transferable, and sized as claimed, before you close. Retrofit scoping defines what the building needs to host high-density liquid-cooled compute, and what that conversion will cost. Phased conversion planning sequences demolition, electrical, mechanical, and fit-out so first load arrives early while later phases build out behind it.
- 01Diligencepower-rights and structural verification before close
- 02Demolition and shell prepgut the interior, keep the structure, substation, and water
- 03Electrical and mechanical fit-outdistribution, coolant loops, heat rejection
- 04First load12-18 months total, revenue-generating capacity energized
What you receive
A qualified site shortlist with power-rights diligence, a retrofit scope with a phased conversion plan, and a timeline and capital plan to first load in 12 to 18 months. The advisory is built to answer the only questions that matter before acquisition: is the power real, is the building convertible, and how fast can revenue-generating load be energized.
Led by the judgment a checklist cannot replace
Jon Moen, founder of Vulcan AI, leads the advisory. Twenty years of high-density infrastructure work and more than fifty data-center deployments inform the calls no checklist captures: which structural surprises are cheap, which substation conditions are deal killers, and where a seller's power claim will not survive diligence.
How it starts
Advisory engagements begin from $15,000, scoped per engagement after an intake call on your capacity target, capital plan, and geography. If you already hold a candidate site, the engagement can begin with diligence on that specific property instead of a market screen.
Next step
Bring a site, or bring a target
Whether you have a property under consideration or a capacity target and a region, send the details and Jon will scope the intake call.