Following its business model of entering under-served second-tier data center markets around the US, Compass Data Centers has chosen New Albany, Ohio (in the Greater Columbus area), as the location for its next build.

Unlike its first two builds, this project is speculative. The company has not secured a tenant for any of the five data center pods it plans to build on the site.

Compass has recently completed data center construction for service-provider Windstream in Franklin, Tennessee, and Durham, North Carolina.

Chris Crosby, Compass CEO and co-founder, said the company was working with local officials in New Albany to attract clients. The city has helped the data center provider go through the paperwork process and has also allowed for tax incentives for its future tenants.

Each tenant will get a partial seven-year property-tax abatement for each of the buildings. The company is not actually going to build anything at the site until it secures a tenant, Crosby said.

It has gone through the planning process and secured the land to make sure that once a tenant does sign on, Compass will be able to deliver its standard modular product in the six months that it promises it can do it in. A standard Compass data center provides a 10,000 sq ft data hall, powered by 1.2MW, in a 21,000 sq ft shell.

While it is not exactly a hot data center market, the area has no shortage of potential customers for a data center provider.

It is home to nearly all of the Fortune 1000 companies in the Columbus area. Examples include Limited Brands (Victoria's Secret, Pink, La Senza and others), Abercrombie & Fitch, TJ Max, Nationwide Insurance and Discover Financial, to name a few.

“JP Morgan Chase has huge operations there,” Crosby said, giving another example of big corporate presence in the market he says is under-served by data center providers.

“It's a very cool market. We're really excited about that.”

New Albany officials are very knowledgeable about data centers and their importance to modern local economies. “Without data centers, you can't get IT jobs, but the data center itself doesn't [create] too many jobs,” Crosby said.

“They really do understand that,” he said, referring to the city government.

In an ideal scenario for Compass, some of the five pods it plans will be leased by service providers and the rest by enterprises, Crosby said.

In addition to corporate presence, the area is good for a data center company because of abundance of fiber infrastructure and availability of skilled workforce. New Albany is close to Ohio State University and major US cities like Indianapolis and Pittsburgh are a short drive away.

There is not a lot of competition for Compass in the market, but it has been heating up recently. Data center provider Expedient announced earlier this week an expansion of its data center in Upper Arlington (a Columbus suburb), and IO has established a mega-site in Dayton, which is about 70 miles west of Columbus.

Another major provider in the area is DataCenter.BZ, with a facility in Columbus proper.