Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has signed two major leases totaling approximately 210,500 square feet at projects in Santa Clara, California and Dublin, Ireland, the company said today. In each case, a single tenant has leased an entire building under development.
In Santa Clara, Digital Realty has signed a long term lease for Turn-Key Datacenter space with "a leading Web 2.0 social networking company" for an 86,000 square foot single building redevelopment project. Digital did not identify the tenant, but the likely suspect is Facebook, which has been rapidly expanding its data center infrastructure.
In October Facebook leased data center space in Ashburn, Virginia in a new facility built by DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT). Last month Jonathan Heiliger, the vice president of Technical Operations at Facebook, indicated that the company was seeking additional space. "In addition to the Virginia facility, we are in the process of expanding data center space on the West Coast," Heiliger said in the comment section of a post at Data Center Knowledge.
Digital Realty Trust has also leased its new ground-up development project in Dublin to one of Ireland's largest telecommunications service suppliers. Of the building's 124,500 square feet, 60,000 square feet was leased as Turn-Key Datacenter space, while the remaining 64,500 square feet was leased as Powered Base Building. Turn-Key Datacenter space is fully developed for data center use, while Powered Base Building is undeveloped space with the power and fiber connectivity already in place, allowing for easy expansion.
"A record number of leases were signed for our Turn-Key Datacenter space during the quarter and we see this accelerating pace continuing into 2008," added Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President of Digital Realty Trust. "Markets where the Company is experiencing the strongest demand include Chicago, Northern New Jersey, Silicon Valley, Phoenix, Dallas and Northern Virginia in the U.S. and London, Dublin, and Paris in Europe."
"These leases demonstrate the success of our redevelopment program and we are pleased with our overall leasing performance during the fourth quarter of 2007," said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust. "Our products offer corporate enterprise customers, including financial institutions, other global Fortune 1000 and Web 2.0 companies alike, as well as large system integrators, flexible, cost effective, customer-oriented solutions for their immediate and longer term datacenter requirements, making Digital Realty Trust a preferred business partner."
Digital Realty Trust is a leading operator of data centers and Internet gateways, and owns 70 properties with 12.3 million rentable square feet in 26 markets throughout North America and Europe.
