American managed IT specialist T5 Data Centers has obtained US$55 million credit facility to fund the development of T5@Portland – a two-building, 200,000 square meter campus in Hillsboro, Oregon.

The project was delayed by a year and construction began in September. The first phase of the new data center is expected to come into operation by summer 2015, and has already been pre-leased to a single customer.

“Portland continues to be one of the most desired data center markets in the United States with its access to clean and reasonably priced energy, its limited natural disaster risk, its prolific network connectivity and its skilled labor force,” explained Tom Westdyk, group head and MD of CIT Corporate Finance, which arranged the credit.

Welcome to the Beaver State
T5 operates individual data centers in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Charlotte, as well as a huge data center park in Colorado Springs with 100MW of available power.

T5@Portland, which is still under construction, is located on Brookwood Parkway, next door to Intel’s Ronler Acres fabrication plant in the area known as the ‘Silicon Forest’.

The facility has obtained a Tier III design certificate from the Uptime Institute and LEED Silver from the US Green Buildings Council. It will feature indirect evaporative cooling, resulting in a projected annualized PUE of 1.3.

Phase I of the build will deliver 3.5MW of power. The campus will eventually grow to 200,000 square feet, and be able to support 12.5MW worth of servers.

According to T5, an unnamed Fortune 100 firm has already leased the first building, but pre-leasing is still open for the second.

“Portland has a proven demand for data centers and should be an excellent location for this new facility,” said Joe Junda, managing director of CIT.

Oregon offers a number of economic incentives to attract data center builders, including significant sales and property tax benefits.

Earlier this year, T5 Data Centers launched a new subsidiary - T5 Facilities Management (T5FM) – to offer its management expertise to data center operators across the US.