FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Hilco Real Estate has brokered the bankruptcy sale of a 48,980-square-foot data center located along U.S. Highway 287 in Fort Worth. Built in 2018 as an industrial flex property and recently repositioned to support data center usage, the facility features 18- to 26-foot clear heights, 22 drive-in doors and office space. The site includes 6.5 acres for future expansion. The facility was leased to an undisclosed trucking company at the time of sale. The buyer and seller were not disclosed.
Data Center Developers Consider Unconventional Sites, Streamlining Strategies to Meet Immense Demand
Data center development is simultaneously growing by leaps and bounds as well as suffering from its own success. The easy-to-develop sites have been snapped up and demand for additional data and cloud services continues to grow, forcing developers to look beyond the obvious locations for sites. This can entail running into less-than-obvious delays in the development process. Data centers reliably store and transmit the deluge of information that makes modern life possible. The factors driving the need for data centers — enterprise demand for cloud services, dependence on 5G cell networks, artificial intelligence technology, edge computing capabilities, social media use and streaming needs — will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years. According to a September 2022 report by advisory company Arizton, approximately 2,825 megawatts of power capacity will be added to the data center market in the next five years. The same report forecasts the U.S. data center construction market will reach $25 billion by 2027, up from $20 billion in 2021. Data centers are utility-intensive property types, and the sites that can support their formidable power, communication and water needs often require high-level considerations right from the start. How can the development process for such projects be streamlined …
FOREST GROVE, ORE. — Crane Data Centers Inc. and Principal Asset Management plan to develop a data center campus in Forest Grove, a suburb of Portland. The campus will be situated near the Hillsboro data center ecosystem, which houses data centers for users including Meta, Twitter and Microsoft, among others. The estimated development cost for the project was not disclosed. “We’re honored to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors to develop a new data center campus in the Portland market,” says Matt Pfile, CEO of Crane. “This strategic partnership with Crane and data center investment in the Portland area is an exciting project for all parties involved and makes for an excellent addition to our current portfolio of data centers,” says Ben Wobschall, managing director of real estate at Principal Asset Management. The first phase of the project includes a data center spanning approximately 300,000 square feet on a 35-acre site. The facility will have an initial capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) with plans to expand to over 100 MW, according to the developers. The two-story property will have 30-foot clear heights with flooring that can support 400 pounds per square foot, according to Crane. The construction timeline for Phase …
CHICAGO — Metro Edge Development Partners has unveiled plans to build a $257 million data center within the Illinois Medical District (IMD) in Chicago. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2023 and be completed in 2024. Metro Edge secured a 75-year ground lease on a nearly two-acre parcel owned by IMD. The data center will rise five stories and span 184,720 square feet. The facility is 50 percent preleased. Corgan is the project architect. Clune Construction is overseeing all construction in partnership with Power Construction and Ujamaa Construction. T5 Data Centers is the project manager.
DORAL, FLA. — JLL has arranged the $34 million sale-leaseback of a 103,000-square-foot data center located at 2100 N.W. 84th Ave. in Doral, a suburb of Miami. Carl Beardsley, Jake Wagner, Josh Katlin, Luis Castillo and Manny de Zárraga of JLL represented the undisclosed seller, which will lease a portion of the space. The unnamed buyer will occupy the remaining space. Situated within America’s Gateway business park in Miami’s Airport industrial submarket, the freestanding facility features several fiber providers, a covered loading dock and 4,092 square feet of mezzanine space. The seller recently invested “significant capital” to update the property, according to JLL.
FAYETTEVILLE, GA. — Quality Technology Services (QTS), a data center owner and operator, has acquired 615 acres in Fayetteville, about 25 miles south of Atlanta. The Overland Park, Kan.-based firm plans to develop the world’s largest multi-data center campus on the site, according to CBRE. The square footage and construction timeline for the campus were not released. Tim Huffman and Mike Lash of CBRE represented the seller, the Fayette County Development Authority, in the deal. The duo also procured QTS, which acquired the assemblage for $153.8 million, or approximately $250,000 per acre. Atlanta’s data center market has seen strong demand as the market recorded a vacancy rate of 3.6 percent as of second-quarter 2022, according to CBRE research. The market is currently home to 249.5 megawatts (MW) of data center capacity, a 71.7-MW increase from the first half of 2021.
ALPHARETTA, GA. — Lincoln Rackhouse, the data center division of Lincoln Property Co., and Principal Real Estate Investors, the real estate investment arm for Principal Global Investors, have partnered to purchase a 185,000-square-foot data center. Originally built and occupied by cell phone giant Blackberry in 2009, the data center sits on a 38-acre site at 4905 N. Point Parkway in Alpharetta, less than two miles from the Avalon mixed-use development and about 25 miles north of Atlanta. The seller and sales price were not disclosed. The data center’s current capacity is 7 megawatts (MW) but is expandable up to 13 MW, and the site can accommodate a new ground-up data center that can support 30 MW of capacity. St. Louis-based Ascent will continue to provide facilities management, engineering and construction services to the site. Digital Crossroad and CBRE’s Atlanta-based data center solutions team will provide marketing and leasing services for the new ownership.
NEKOMA, N.D. — Bitzero Blockchain Inc. has agreed to acquire the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex (SRMSC) in Nekoma, a tiny city of fewer than 50 residents approximately 130 miles south of Winnipeg, Canada. The Cavalier County Job Development Authority (CCJDA) is selling the property to Bitzero, which plans to redevelop the asset into a highly secure data center. The project costs, including the acquisition, are estimated at $500 million. Commonly referred to as “The Pyramid,” the SRMSC is a Cold War-era military installation which was built in 1970 to protect the nearby Grand Forks Air Force Base from potential attack from Soviet missiles. The Pyramid became operational in 1975, featured two different kinds of radar systems and data processing equipment, and controlled 30 anti-ballistic missiles that could be launched in case of attack. The main building features three-foot-thick concrete walls. The missile site was abandoned after just eight months in operation, when Congress voted to deactivate it. The missiles and equipment were removed, but the concrete structures remain on the landscape. The CCJDA has owned the site’s tactical area since 2017, but voted unanimously to accept Bitzero’s bid proposal after a presentation from CEO Akbar Shamji. Bitzero’s bid proposal for the site included a …
BOSTON AND NEW YORK CITY — American Tower Corp. (NYSE: AMT), a multitenant communications REIT, has agreed to sell a 29 percent stake in its data center platform to Stonepeak, an alternative asset management firm based in New York City. The deal, which comprises common and preferred equity from Stonepeak’s affiliated investment vehicles and debt commitments, is valued at $2.5 billion. The AMT data center portfolio consists of 27 data centers in 10 U.S. markets. AMT purchased Denver-based CoreSite Realty Corp. in a $10.1 billion deal that was announced last November. AMT will retain managerial and operational control, as well as day-to-day oversight of its U.S. data center business, and Stonepeak will obtain certain governance rights. The transaction is expected to close in third-quarter 2022, subject to customary closing conditions. “We are pleased to partner with Stonepeak in our U.S. data center business,” says Tom Bartlett, president and CEO of American Tower. “While this transaction supports the equity financing component for our previously completed CoreSite acquisition, it also creates a platform through which growth opportunities can be strategically evaluated and financed.” Andrew Thomas, managing director and co-head of communications at Stonepeak, says that AMT’s data center platform aligns with Stonepeak’s …
SPRINGFIELD, VA. — Finmarc Management, a real estate investment and management firm based in Bethesda, Md., has purchased an 11-building portfolio from Boston Properties in Springfield for $127.5 million. The portfolio spans 740,000 square feet of industrial, flex/office and data center space in one- and two-story properties. Situated near Fort Belvoir and I-95, the portfolio was 74 percent leased at the time of sale to tenants including ADT Security Systems, Avaya, SAIC, The Vomela Cos. and the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA). William Collins and Eric Berkman of Cushman & Wakefield represented Boston Properties in the transaction, and Finmarc was self-represented. Michael Zelin and Marshall Scanlon of Cushman & Wakefield, along with consultant Cliff Mendelson of Met Cap Advisors, arranged acquisition financing on behalf of Finmarc.