With the construction process almost complete, QTS Realty Trust is on schedule with its conversion of the Chicago Sun Times building into a data center, company’s first to be built in the Chicago area.
The initial stage, commissioning in July, will encompass 48,000 square feet (4,500 sq m) of white space and 8 MW of critical power. The planned second stage will add an additional 85,000 square feet (7,900 sq m) and another 24 MW of critical power.
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Launch plans include three different providers of fiber optic connections and five providers of network connectivity, with plans to add more networking partners in the futre to meet customer needs. The facility is located approximately three miles from the 350 East Cermak, a networking and data center hub in downtown Chicago, giving tenants access to a major interconnect without the need to pay for an expensive location.
The data center is expected to achieve a PUE of less than 1.2 primarily due to adoption of the KyotoWheel cooling technology, an innovative method that circulates the air through the entire data center in a highly efficient fashion. When asked about its ability to handle the notorious hot and humid summer days in Chicago, QTS said it still believed that even the worst days would have little impact on the cooling functionality and not prevent the facility from hitting its annualized PUE target.
This site will become QTS’ 25th data center worldwide and its main technology hub for the Midwestern United States. No major anchor tenant has been announced, though QTS stated that it has several tenants already in place in the facility, and pointed out that its most recent data center project in Dallas, Texas still has not identified a client who could be referred to as an ’anchor tenant’ and the raised floor space is now over 50 percent full.