Detroit real estate firm Bedrock is planning a new carrier hotel data center in the Michigan city.
The company announced this week it has partnered with digital infrastructure platform provider Raeden to deploy an independent carrier hotel to Downtown Detroit.
Located within Bedrock’s 615 West Lafayette property, the new 0.7MW Detroit carrier hotel will begin operations this month. A previous LoopNet listing suggests the data center space will span around 3,544 sq ft (329 sqm). Raeden will operate the facility.
“The introduction and added value of the carrier hotel is a significant milestone as we continue to position Detroit as one of the most connected and technologically advanced cities in the United States,” said Michael Osment, chief technology officer at Bedrock. “This is the first in a series of steps by Bedrock to strategically activate local technology assets to bring a faster, more efficient, and readily available networking platform to the Detroit market.”
The companies said the deal would “enable Bedrock tenants the ability to access faster and more resilient internet-centric services while enabling expanded internet access throughout Detroit.”
“We are thrilled to partner with Bedrock and view the Detroit carrier hotel as catalytic to our overall mission, which is to partner with real estate owners to optimize latent digital tenancy opportunities within their portfolios,” said Kari Schrader, Raeden’s Chief Executive Officer. "Through the development of the carrier hotel and future integration between Bedrock’s portfolio and Raeden’s services, we believe Detroit will become one of the most connected cities in the United States.
Formerly the Detroit News Building, the six-story, 311,800 sq ft (29,000 sqm) 615 West Lafayette was built around 1915-1916. The Detroit News left the building around 2014 and sold the site to Bedrock for an undisclosed fee. This is seemingly Bedrock’s first data center project.
Founded in 2011 and part of Rocket Mortgage (formerly Quicken Loans), Bedrock and its affiliates have invested and committed more than $5.6 billion to acquire and developing more than 100 properties in Detroit and Cleveland.
Founded in 2019, Raeden allows real estate owners to identify and deploy data centers in available portfolio space. Its team has previously worked at companies such as Element Critical, CIM Group, and Stack. This is the first announcement the company has made publicly.
Over the next twelve months, Bedrock and Raeden said they will continue to collaborate on additional technological investments, including ‘activating existing data center assets'.
