CHICAGO — A joint venture between Red Sea Group USA and Server Farm Realty has acquired a Chicago data center from The Northern Trust Company. The eight-story building, which is currently undergoing renovations, totals 443,446 square feet over eight stories.
The property, which is located on 5.23 acres at 840 South Canal St., is currently undergoing a $200 million conversion into a multi-tenant data center. The building had previously been used by Northern Trust as a technology, data and operations center. It was originally developed in the 1940s by General Electric as a manufacturing facility. When the data center conversion is complete, 840 South Canal Street will be one of the largest data centers in the Midwest.
“The data center market in the Loop area has been tight for some time now due to the limited supply of qualified alternatives,”said Geoffrey Kasselman, the president of Op2mize, the brokerage firm that represented the buyer in the deal. “This property helps fill that void with its 38-megawatts of dedicated power from multiple feeds, heavy floor loads, high ceilings, redundant infrastructure, robust security, connectivity from 10 different carriers and, most of all, speed to market.”
Kasselman was joined by Op2mize broker Thomas Bueltmann and Bryan Loewen of Newmark Knight Frank in representing the joint venture. The Jones Lang LaSalle team of Criag McKesson, Michael Sessa and Dan Masalauski represented the seller.
In addition to the data center space, the building contains two surface parking lots with 344 spaces, a decommissioned helipad and the ability to be expanded to more than 1.1 million square feet.
— Coleman Wood