Leading owner and manager of corporate data centers and Internet gateways, Digital Realty Trust, Inc, has announced the sale of 100 Technology Center Drive, a 197,000 square foot suburban office building located in Stoughton, Massachusetts and 4055 Valley View Lane, a 240,000 square foot office building located in suburban Dallas, Texas. The combined sale price for the properties was US$78.5 million, resulting in an estimated total gain on sale of $18.1 million.
"The sale of these two non-core office buildings allows us to redeploy capital to support our acquisition and redevelopment programs," commented Michael Foust, CEO of Digital Realty Trust. "Our focus is on growing our portfolio of income producing datacenter facilities as well as building out and leasing additional highly improved data center space from our inventory of space held for redevelopment."
Prior to this announcement, the company had disclosed details of its acquisition of 43881, 43831 and 43791 Devin Shafron Drive, previously known as Loudoun Exchange, located in Ashburn, Virginia. The property consists of three single-story buildings totaling 432,000 square feet and is approximately 40% leased. The purchase price was $62.5 million.
"With this acquisition we now have six properties consisting of ten buildings totaling approximately 770,000 square feet in Northern Virginia. It is one of the top markets for data center space in the country with strong demand coming from government, Internet enterprise, system integrators and other corporate customers," commented Foust. "The property was purpose built for data center use and includes over 167,000 square feet of space leased to two global tenants, a major aeronautics corporation and a leading Internet enterprise company. The remaining 265,000 square feet will be included in our value added inventory of space held for redevelopment, which has the potential to support over 160,000 square feet of highly improved data center space." "We are well underway with our redevelopment and master planning of the property. We will implement the first phase of our plan, delivering over 2.2MW of UPS load in new Turn-Key Datacenter space later in 2007 to serve our current customer demand. In addition to the Turn-Key Datacenter space, we are also excited about our ability to offer a large, build-to-suit single tenant data center solution," commented Chris Crosby, SVP of sales and technical services. "This property provides our customers with the full breadth of the Digital Realty Trust offering: from Turn-Key Datacenter to single tenant build-to-suit data center."
The state and local officials have made a focused effort to support investment in data center operations in the Northern Virginia market. "This investment shows the continuing interest from the financial sector in Virginia," said Patrick O. Gottschalk, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade. "Infusing capital into the market will allow other companies to locate their data center operations in the Commonwealth. I welcome Digital Realty Trust to Virginia as they continue to expand their holdings in high-tech, high-value properties."
"The infrastructure, the fiber, the physical space and most importantly the people with the knowledge and skill to operate data centers are well established in Loudoun County," says Kirby Bowers, County Administrator for Loudoun County Government. "Access to the mission critical services that these data centers offer and their proximity to major Internet switching points are key differentiators of having operations in Loudoun County. This significant investment is part of a growing cluster of more than a dozen such data centers in Loudoun County, beginning in the late nineties, establishing Loudoun as one of the world's premier data center markets."
Other properties acquired by the Digital Realty Trust in the Northern Virginia market include a 71,000 square foot fully leased facility in Herndon; a 95,000 square foot fully leased facility also in Ashburn; a 135,000 square foot facility in Sterling that was added to its inventory of space held for redevelopment and subsequently 100% leased in the first quarter of 2007; 19,000 square feet of datacenter space in Reston; and 17,000 square feet of data center space in Vienna.
During the first quarter of 2007, Digital Realty Trust completed $160.7 million of acquisitions totaling 787,000 square feet, including approximately 411,000 square feet of space held for redevelopment. The Company currently has construction projects underway in eleven US and European markets totaling over 500,000 rentable square feet of Turn-Key Datacenter and build-to-suit data center space.