Corelink said it has secured more than 16 megawatts of power for the facility, which will eventually be able to house up to 65,000 square feet of useable raised floor, providing ample space for expansion. The location in Mount Prospect is about 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, close to O’Hare Airport but outside of flight paths, the company said.

Corelink was founded in 2007 and is backed by M/C Ventures of Boston and has existing data centers in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Seattle. Corelink’s founder and CEO is Geoff Hampson, who has been involved in numerous startups, including Peer 1 Network Enterprises, where he served as CEO from 2000 through 2006. Corelink says it has an “active” mergers and acquisitions program and anticipates further expansion of its colocation facility footprint.

“Our move into the Midwest comes at a good time, when demand for co-location remains very strong and supply is limited,” said Hampson. “This is particularly true for the Chicago market where we are committed to making a large investment into this new facility, which will be our largest yet.”

Corelink also said that it will move its headquarters from Phoenix to Chicago, effective immediately. The company also said that it has hired Jay Sinder as CFO. Sinder comes to Corelink from Hostway Corporation where he was CFO. Prior to Hostway, Sinder was CFO at Focal Communications where he was responsible, among other things, in structuring and securing both equity and long term debt financing for the company.

“Jay is a great addition to the Corelink team,” said Hampson. “He brings in-depth knowledge of the industry and a track record of managing and financing successful growth stories.”

The expansion will support growing demand from financial customers interested in hosting their trading applications in close proximity to major derivatives markets based in Chicago. Savvis ‘ facility at 350 East Cermak will now encompass approximately 30,000 square feet of raised floor and provide access to key trading venues, including the CME Group. It will also serve as one of the global delivery points for the Thomson Reuters Hosting Solution announced last year, which is being offered in six Savvis data centers around the globe.

“Chicago is an important financial center, and we are pleased to meet existing demand and expand our proximity hosting and IT infrastructure services on East Cermak,” said Varghese Thomas, global head of financial services for Savvis. “The financial services industry is increasingly moving toward converged solutions featuring high-availability application hosting and world-class network access for the leading global trading venues and liquidity pools across all asset classes.”

Savvis currently operates 28 data centers globally, with more than 1.4 million square feet of high-quality, raised floor space, which is designed to support enterprise IT operations.

A design concept for a six-story, 300,000 square foot data center in Chicago proposed by McHugh Construction.

McHugh Construction Co. has announced plans to build a major data center in downtown Chicago, just blocks from the city’s major Internet connectivity hub. The Chicago-based company has asked city officials to approve a six-story, 300,000 square foot data center project at 2222 South Indiana Avenue, adjacent to the McCormick Place convention center and 350 East Cermak Road, the enormous carrier hotel operated by Digital Realty Trust.

The project revives a plan for a data center at the site, which was first proposed in 2001 but shelved after the dot-com bust left an oversupply of data center space. In 2008 McHugh tried to sell the site for possible use as a hotel or entertainment complex to support the convention center. But the credit crunch made it difficult to finance those types of projects, and with demand for data center space in downtown Chicago remaining strong, McHugh revisited the data center concept.

Supply Running Low
A likely factor in the decision is the dwindling amount of space remaining at 350 East Cermak, which spans 1.1 million square feet but is 95.9 percent occupied as of Sept. 30, according to Digital Realty. The only other building in downtown Chicago with space for large footprints available is the CoreSite building at 427 South LaSalle Street.

The supply of data center space in downtown Chicago is running low at a time when demand remains strong, driven largely by financial firms’ appetite for additional capacity for fast-growing electronic trading operations.

The planning board has not yet considered McHugh’s proposal, which seeks to reduce the number of required parking spaces at the site from 156 to just 20, reflecting the lower foot traffic at data centers. But McHugh has outlined details of the project in meetings with community leaders. Architectural drawings show that McHugh hopes to gain certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings.

Design Features Louvers, Solar Power
The design drawings include louvers along the side of the building, a feature often used to support fresh air cooling. The plans calls for a rooftop solar power installation, with about 8,300 square feet of photovoltaic panels. That’s not large enough to cover the power requirements of most data center tenants, but could help earn LEED points for on-site generation and be attractive to companies grooming their power footprints to add more renewable sources.

The drawings also feature a “green roof” with vegetation covering about 10,000 square feet. The design calls for diesel generators to be housed inside the lower floor, which will reduce the noise profile of the building, which is often a concern for large data centers in densely-populated urban areas.

McHugh had its headquarters on the property from 1970 to 2002, when the company moved to 1737 South Michigan Ave.

Last Thursday Level 3 launched a wireless tower access service offering wireless tower operators direct connectivity to the Level 3 backbone, which would provide cost-effective options for wireless backhaul in metropolitan and rural locations. This is a growth market, according to analysts like Jennifer Pigg from the Yankee Group, who says mobile operators are scrambling to meet capacity demand and predicts that mobile data traffic will grow by an order of magnitude in the coming years. 

The towers are located in rural areas and offer voice, data and Internet services as an alternative to incumbent providers. Level 3 also offers shared infrastructure to allow wireless carriers to expand without building their own towers. 

Wireless data networks have been an increasingly hot market in recent months, according to Visiant Strategies, which examined the market in a report titled US Mobile Backhaul 2010: Continued Expansion 2009 to 2015. ”All wireless carriers in the United States are continuing to ramp up their networks with technologies that allow much greater capacity and the use of much more capacity per user, mainly a result of meaningful wireless data applications and devices, and this means much more backhaul capacity will be needed,” wrote Andy Fuertes of Visiant Strategies.

It’s been a busy time for news announcements from the wireless backhaul industry. Some recent examples:

• Besides the wireless data coming from business and consumer communications devices, there is also a growing need for wireless backhaul from smart grid projects.  Last Wednesday the city of Glendale California announced that KEMA is assisting in deploying an advanced metering infrastructure and meter data management system.  Glendale Water & Power (GWP) will be replacing all of its electric meters, which serve over 100,000 customers, with smart meters enabled with two-way communications, and automating their 35,000 water meters to communicate over a secure wireless network.”
• On Thursday mobile backhaul network provider Tellabs announced it was acquiring WiChorus of San Jose, California.  Tellabs CEO Robert W. Pullen said “This move compliments, differentiates and advances our growth solutions portfolio including Tellabs Mobile, Optical and business solutions.”  WiChorus’ SmartCore mobile packet core platform is purpose-built for 4G, LTE and WiMax, with support for 3G.
• Tower Cloud Inc., a wireless backhaul provider raised $20 million last week from an investor group led by telecom entrepreneur Cam Lanier and return backers  El Dorado Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.  Tower operates backhaul networks in south and central Florida, and is constructing a new network in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Last month Qwest launched a new mobile ethernet backhaul service, targeting wireless service providers with fiber-based Ethernet to cell sites. This service will give WSPs incremental, scalable bandwidth which then allows them to increase capacity to cell sites on an as-needed basis.  It will also be available in either dedicated or shared models and is ideal for those migrating from traditional SONET backhaul services.
• Cisco’s acquisition of Starent Networks is said to fill the holes in its 3G and 4G core product portfolio, giving them an end-to-end mobile core solution.  Starent was selected by Verizon Wireless along with Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson to build their LTE (Long Term Evolution) core and they may win a forthcoming LTE core contract from AT&T in the future.  The Cisco / Starent deal pairs Cisco’s IP routing strength with Starent’s expertise in mobile data gateways.
• Harris Stratex Networks (HSTX) received the 2009 Wireless Backhaul Distinction Award from the Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC). This was for the successful demonstration of commitment to innovation towards the 4G wireless evolution. Harris makes The Eclipse Packet Node platform which supports TDM, as well as carrier-grade Ethernet data traffic, via scalable Liquid Bandwidth.

There were a large number of vendor announcements from Chicago last week, where the 2009 Supercomm conference was held.  Announcements came from Juniper, BridgeWave, Exar and many others.  The opening keynote came from U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra.

Image copyright David Neale and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence

In a presentation Tuesday at  DataCenterDynamics Chicago, Jim Kerrigan of Grubb & Ellis said more than 20 megawatts of data center critical load was leased in the third quarter, the strongest activity thus far in 2009. Kerrigan, the director of the data center practice at Grubb & Ellis, said demand is outpacing supply by “three-fold.”

Chicago is Hottest Colo Market
Kerrigan said downtown Chicago is the hottest colocation market in the country, while northern Virginia is seeing the strongest activity in leasing of wholesale data center space.

Kerrigan noted that the Chicago market is really two markets, with strong demand and limited supply in downtown, while larger blocks of space are available in the suburban market due to new construction. Driven by strong demand from financial trading firms, data center occupancy in downtown Chicago is pushing 95 percent.

In northern Virginia, supply is limited through the remainder of 2009, but several new projects will come online in early 2010, including new data center space from Digital Realty Trust, Power Loft, CoreSite and IT Server.

Big Issue: Lease Expirations
The imbalance between supply and demand has been the key focus of the data center real estate market. But Kerrigan says the renegotiation of existing leases looms as a huge issue for the industry over the next several years. He estimates that leases representing 32 percent of all leased data center space in the U.S. will expire between now and 2013.

A key issue is that while many older leases were negotiated based on square footage, many deals are now being negotiated based on critical power load. Tenants and their data center landlords will need to address this market shift in reworking leases, Kerrigan said.

The interior of the new CoreSite data center expansion in Chicago.

CoreSite (formerly CRG West) has completed 20,000 square feet of new space at the company’s Chicago data center at 427 South LaSalle Street, the company said today. The new space, located in the heart of the financial district, will accommodate demand for data center space in downtown Chicago. It expands the existing footprint at the LaSalle Street site, where CoreSite has about 30 existing data center and colocation customers.

The new space is supported by 2N emergency generator back-up power as well as an N+1 cooling and UPS configuration. It features a raised-floor design with a return-air plenum, allowing for hot aisle containment to maximize energy efficiency.

“We take great pride in building out data center space the right way, with strong, redundant reliable infrastructure to provide a reliable, well-connected home for our customers’ mission-critical ICT systems,” said Billie Haggard, Vice President of Data Centers for CoreSite. “Our goal is to design, build and manage our data centers with our customers’ success in mind. We provide them with an environment that promotes and accommodates their future growth and do the job right.”

CoreSite announced its rebranding from CRG West last week, saying the new name reflects the national scope of the company’s operations after several years of active expansion in its data center footprint

The new facility is the latest opening in an increasingly active Chicago data center market. “This data center has been specifically designed to give organizations the service, support and pricing that has been missing in the Chicago suburban colocation market,” said Tom Chaffin, Managing Partner of Continuum. “We feel AboveNet is a key ingredient to the success of our data center. AboveNet provides exceptional services and is the backbone of our transport network.”

Continuum’s management team previously developed Stargate’s 86,000 square foot data center in Oak Brook, Ill. in 2007, which was acquired by Latisysi n August 2008. This experienced data center design team has been providing colocation services to small, medium and Fortune 1000 companies for more than 10 years.

“As we complete this implementation, we are looking ahead a few months to our next expansion, which will likely be an upgrade to 10Gbps bandwidth to meet our customers’ increasing need for high bandwidth,” said Chaffin.

AboveNet, Inc. provides high-bandwidth connectivity for business and carriers. Its private optical network delivers key network and IP services in and among 15 top U.S. metro markets and London.

Check out our Green Data Center Channel for more on this topic. For additional video, visit our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

The DuPont Fabros CH1 facility, where SingleHop has leased space from ServerCentral.

Managed hosting provider SingleHop has expanded its footprint within ServerCentral’s 10,000 square feet of colocation space in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. SingleHop says it entered into a $2.5 million agreement with ServerCentral, which is a tenant in the DuPont Fabros Technology CH1 data center.

The new space can support power densities of 12 kilowatts per cabinet (210 watts per square foot). Its the second data center for SingleHop, which also operates a facility in downtown Chicago housing 2,000 servers. SingleHop was founded in 2006 by Chicago entrepreneurs Dan Ushman and Zak Boca and says it has annual revenue of $4.5 million.

“The additional space enables geographic redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities,” said Brandon Ewing, SingleHop’s Senior Network Engineer. “Customers will benefit as they have more room for growth and more options for redundancy. The new data center gives SingleHop a platform from which to continue heavily investing in a wide and robust network both at our original data center and the new facility.”

Boca said the data center’s capabilities would boost SingleHop’s business. “This facility wasn’t refit, or re-engineered,” he said. “It was built entirely from the ground up to anticipate high server density. It allows for our company to use all of our space, and power. With 48U cabinets and the ability to more than adequately handle 12KW per cab, we’ll waste less money and resources, which in turn will keep our clients from paying for inefficiencies.”

“The combination of DuPont Fabros’ top-notch facility and our onsite staff’s expertise in hosting infrastructure give SingleHop a decided advantage in the Chicago market,” said Jordan Lowe, President and CEO of ServerCentral.

The CH2 project represents a huge vote of confidence in the strength of the Chicago data center market, which has seen strong leasing downtown but uneven uptake in several new projects in the Western suburbs. That includes a large facility built in Elk Grove Village by another wholesale data center provider, DuPont Fabros Technology, which opened in mid-2008 and is presently 17 percent leased. Equinix also built a large colocation center in Elk Grove Village last year.

But Ascent hit a home run with its first Northlake property, which was announced in 2007 as a multi-tenant speculative project but by the end of the year was fully leased to Microsoft. The developer believes its delivery model, known as Dynamic Data Center Suites, will prove to be a winning approach, combining colocation space with custom data suites featuring dedicated tenant infrastructure.

“The new Northlake data center, CH2, is designed to be a completely flexible environment, enabling customers to choose the most appropriate option for their needs,” said Phil Horstmann, the CEO of Ascent Corporation. “Dynamic Data Center Suites represent the future of the data center – this is the first time customers will have the option to fully customize their infrastructures. Planning the new data center geographically near the 707,000 square foot facility we developed last year in Northlake also enables customers to take advantage of the same power and connectivity capabilities.”

The Dynamic Data Center Suites delivery allows customers to lease a basic powered shell or a fully constructed, turn-key space. Finished suites are fully customizable units that can maintain their own shipping and receiving docks, entrance doors, branded lobbies and personnel. Tenants can choose between a raised floor or slab envirnment, chilled water or air-side cooling, or standard racks or container-based computing units.

The new facility will feature a dedicated on-site utility substation with dual diverse connections to the transmission grid. Compute spaces in CH2 will range from 10,000-250,000+ square feet, and customers will have the option to maintain self-sufficient suites or utilize Ascent’s data center expertise throughout the build-out phase, as well as take advantage of fully managed maintenance services.

Headquartered in Saint Louis, Ascent specializes in advanced mission critical facilities and offers clients a broad range of delivery models spanning shell & core, build-to-suit, turnkey, and outsourced critical systems operations. Ascent’s clients include Fortune 500 firms, and service providers.