A view of the Intergate.Columbia data center complex built by Sabey Corp. in Wenatchee, Washington.
Sabey Corp.'s Intergate.Columbia data center complex near East Wenatchee, Washington has received the Technology Development of the Year award from NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association. Sabey, a Seattle-based developer was presented the award at the Washington Chapter of NAIOP’s event on Nov. 6.
Intergate.Columbia is a 438,000 square foot data center campus, which includes large data centers for T-Mobile and VMware. Sabey Construction Inc. broke ground at the 30-acre site near the Columbia River in April 2008 and simultaneously constructed the shell and core for two buildings. Despite the dual schedules, the work was completed by the end of the year on time and within budget.
“The project would have been much more difficult had it not been for the support of the Douglas County officials who vigorously worked with us and assisted in our success,” said John Sabey, Senior V.P. Real Estate for Sabey.
The Douglas County Public Utility District gets 98.5 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric dams and 1.5 percent from wind generation. Other energy saving measures included the use of air economizers for "free-cooling” for most of the year, as well as evaporative cooling which is possible due to the relative dryness of eastern Washington’s air.
Sabey is in the final stage of LEED silver certification for Building B, where the tenant, VMware, is pursuing a platinum LEED certification for its Sabey-built tenant improvements. Building B’s mechanical system uses hot air/cold air physical separation as well as evaporative cooling. This enables a significant increase in data center efficiency by extending the number of hours that the data center can use air-side economizer “free cooling.” The cooling system also captures the server-generated heat to help maintain office temperatures year round.
Sabey also recognized John Ford, Director of Technology Real Estate; John Sasser, Manager of Data Center Operations; Doug Gardner, Senior Project Manager; Andrew Gardner, Superintendent; and Marcus McFarland, Project Engineer of Sabey Construction, Inc.
