Equinix will occupy a 50,000 sq ft data center in what is a downtown Seattle car park, due for opening in Q1 2013.

The $60m facility will house 1,000 cabinet equivalents. The site will be an Equinix International Business Exchange.

Digital Realty Trust in a 50/50 joint venture partnership with Clise Properties, Inc. will redevelop a six-storey parking garage to include four floors of data center space. The site is located adjacent to the Westin Building in downtown Seattle, where Digital Realty and Clise Properties are partners in an existing joint venture.

The new joint venture partnership subsequently signed a build to suit agreement with Equinix at the site, which will support 4,100 kilowatt of IT capacity. As joint venture partners, Digital Realty and Clise Properties, Inc. are responsible for funding the base building improvements and data center shell construction.

The new Seattle IBX will also be adjacent to Equinix's existing SE2 data center.

As a major communications hub for the Northwest United States and a distribution point for IP traffic to Asia, the Seattle market is important for customers who rely on Platform Equinix to improve application performance and connect to key members of their digital ecosystem,"said Charles Meyers, president of the Americas for Equinix. "Equinix has long catered to the many cloud, network, and digital content companies in the Seattle area and we are continuing to invest in the metro region to meet customer demand for our data center and interconnection services."

A. M. Clise, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Clise Properties, said: "We have worked in close partnership with Digital Realty for a number of years at the Westin building, the Northwest region's premier Internet Gateway data center. This new project represents our shared commitment to successfully meet our customers'ongoing data center requirements."