Private equity firm GI Partners has added a Chicago data center to a real estate portfolio it manages for a Californian public sector retirement fund. 

Continuing an aggressive purchase spree GI Partners has bought a facility at Chicago’s 601 West Polk Street, on behalf of a fund it manages for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. This follows the acquisition of data centers in Texas and Colorado announced last week. 

 Fully leased facility

According to Chief Engineer magazine, the building was originally a warehouse for Marshall Fields, a Chicago department store which became part of Macy’s. It was built with 18 foot ceilings and reinforced floors to accomodate large merchandise and the horse-drawn distribution networks of the early 20th century.

It fell vacant and served as a movie location, until Sprint moved in in the 1990s and it became a “carrier hotel”. In 2011, it was purchased from bankruptcy by AlteredScale which opened in 2013. AlteredScale was in turn bought by cloud and managed services provider TierPoint last week. 

GI has bought the 107,000 sq ft (10,000 sq m) facility, which is still fully leased to TierPoint, whose subsidiaries and partners AlteredScale, Colocation America, PlusOne and Loopnet also operate from the building.

GI Partners does not comment on their data center acquisitions nor has the purchase price been disclosed.