Creve Coeur, Missouri-based property management company Koman Group, and St Louis-based information technology company Ascent Corp, have entered into a joint venture for the construction of a 441,000 square foot data center in Chicago.
According to a report in commercial real estate news journal Globe Street, the two storey facility is being built on a speculative basis for one to eight tenants. Construction on the building will begin this summer and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2008.
The reportedly US$175-million project will be one of the largest data centers in the country and will have the largest power capacity in the area, Spillane says. The center will have 40MW of power, which could be expandable to 60MW, Spillane says. The facility will also different from the norm in that it will be a purpose built facility as opposed to being an existing building renovated into a data center. More than 45 percent, 200,000 square foot, of the building will have a raised floor of three to four feet and there will be 21-foot high ceilings.
The joint venture will also have its own substation on the property, Spillane says. When the facility in Northlake is completed, there will be about six data centers in the Chicagoland area and there are about 13 "viable data centers on a national basis, he says. There are probably between five to 10 "large serious users that are "actively looking for data centers currently but there are a lot more businesses that would have a need for data centers, Spillane adds.