$50M Lease for Net2EZ at Garland Building

Net2EZ Managed Data Centers has leased more than 50,000 square feet of data center space at the Garland Center at 1200 W. Seventh Street in Los Angeles, Globe Street reported this week. The 10-year lease, which is valued at more than $50 million, is one of the largest office deals in Los Angeles this year.

Net2EZ also has data center space at the 365 Main facility in El Segundo and DuPont Fabros Technology’s ACC4 data center in Ashburn, Va. The company is expanding on both coasts, having recently announced a substantial lease at ACC5, the new DuPont Fabros facility in Ashburn scheduled to open later this year.

Net2EZ’s lease at the Garland Center marks a return to the building for the company, which left after a lengthy power outage in 2006. The ownership of the Garland Center has since completed a $40 million project to improve the building’s electrical and mechanical infrastructure. Net2EZ co-founder Pervez Delawalla told Globe Street that the $40 million investment has turned the Garland Center into “one of the premier critical facility buildings in Los Angeles.”

Feral Cats Block $68M Los Angeles Data Center

A $68 million project to build a new high-tech data center for Los Angeles County is being held up because the property is occupied - by 150 wild cats. The new facility is to be built at the Rancho Los Amigos South Campus in Downey, parts of which have fallen into disrepair. Plans to raze buildings to make way for the data center have been held up by the presence of the feral cats, as reported in today’s Los Angeles Times. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s a [long pause] difficult situation,” said Jan Takata of the county’s Chief Administrative Office, which oversees Rancho’s south campus. … For starters, figuring out what to do with feral cats has vexed animal control managers, veterinarians and biologists around the world. The never-tamed offspring of abandoned or lost pets, they are usually too wild to be adopted as house pets. Trapping feral cats to euthanize them is time-consuming, expensive and far from foolproof. And killing the cats on site is not palatable to the public, as Wisconsinites discovered in 2005 when not even hunters wanted to legalize cat shoots.

Many of the buildings on the Rancho Los Amigos South Campus have stood empty since the late 1980s. The county data center was seen as an ideal project to rehabilitate the site.

One Wilshire, Illustrated

Wired provides a photo tour of One Wilshire, the Los Angeles carrier hotel that provides space and interconnections for more than 260 ISPs and telcos. The photos illustrate the kind of cabling you see in the world’s densest meet-me room. If you like data center tours and cabling photos, you’ll want to have a look.

“If this facility went down, most of California and parts of the rest of the world would not be able to connect to the Internet,” notes Wired, which describes One Wilshire as “one of the web’s largest nerve centers, hidden in an otherwise nondescript office building.” Hines REIT bought One Wilshire from The Carlyle Group for $287 million last August.

InteleNet Expands Irvine Data Center

Managed Data Holdings (MDH) is already expanding its data center footprint. The company, which is backed by private equity firms and acquired Data393 earlier this month, is pumping up the infrastructure at one of its existing properties. Irvine, Calif.-based managed hosting provider InteleNet Communications, which was bought by MDH in October, has started construction on a data center expansion that will add 12,000 square feet of space engineered to support high density computing customers.

Intelenet had planned the expansion for later in 2008. With its acquisition by Managed Data Holdings, the new space is now expected to be ready for customers in March. InteleNet has already begun pre-selling space in the expansion space.

DreamHost Evicted From LA Offices

In an item yesterday we noted that DreamHost was among the remaining data center tenants at the Garland Building in Los Angeles. We may have spoken too soon. The hosting company has posted a blog item announcing its eviction from its Los Angeles offices, which the company attributes to “a little bit too much bringing alcohol into the building, playing pool, neighbor complaints about loud profanities.” What’s more, the item (attributed to co-founder Josh Jones) ads that “our new office space isn’t even ready yet!” (See the end of this post for an update).

I have to wonder what DreamHost’s new landlords will think when they read the blog item. I can appreciate that a humorous, offbeat reputation may play well for some hosting companies. DreamHost has certainly cultivated that image with its blog. But the eviction post (complete with photos) screams the question of whether there are any grown-ups running either the company or the blog.

Upgrades Planned for LA’s Garland Building

The Garland Building (1200 W. 7th) in Los Angeles, which hosts several data centers, has been plagued by power capacity and reliability problems for several years. Help may be on the way, as the building’s management is promising $30 million in infrastructure upgrades for the 740,000 square foot building. The Internet companies at 1200 W. 7th have been pressing for upgrades since the building suffered major outages in 2005 and 2006.

The impetus for the upgrades is a new lease by anchor tenant Bank of America, which will pay $28 million to continue leasing 83,000 square feet on the lower levels. Real estate sources said the Bank of America lease was the key to a plan by master lease holder Charter Holdings to upgrade the building. Jason Warner of CB Richard Ellis told industry journal Globe Street that Charter Holdings will invest $30 million to upgrade the infrastructure by doubling the size of the central plant and “significantly increasing the building’s power, back-up power and mechanical equipment.”

NPR Features One Wilshire Carrier Hotel

National Public Radio technology correspondent Xeni Jardin featured Internet carrier hotels in a segment that aired yesterday. The piece spotlighted One Wilshire, the huge Los Angeles Internet hub owned and operated by CRG West, the technology real estate arm of the Carlyle Group. The report introduced carrier hotels and the basics of Internet infrastructure to a general audience, but also highlighted the fact that “business is booming” at One Wilshire, according to CRG West’s David Dunn, who said One Wilshire has experienced demand from the emerging market for Internet video games.

Jardin, also one of the anchor bloggers at Boing Boing, used the recent earthquake in Taiwan to illustrate the resiliency of Internet infrastructure, noting that the networks housed at One Wilshire were able to route around the outages within several days of the earthquake. The segment also mentions the possibility the carrier hotels could be targeted by terrorists, an angle that has often turned up in media coverage of this industry. Internet security guru Bruce Schneier contributed a sound clip that placed the terrorist issue in perspective. You can listen here or check out the photos at Flickr.

Some ISPs Spurn 10 GigE Video Peering

Some ISPs are turning away paid high-speed transit traffic from video companies, citing the cost of the equipment needed to upgrade to 10 gigabit Ethernet connections. These ISPs are sticking with slower connections, even though the growing volume of video traffic could create periodic capacity challenges. This trend was noted earlier this month by Bill Norton, a founder of Equinix and leading researcher on Internet peering, who predicts that the surging popularity of online video will bring “a new wave of disruption that potentially dwarfs currently peered Internet traffic.”

“This has become a significant issue NOW because a few of the largest US ISPs are turning away these n*10G Internet video transit customers,” Norton said in a post in the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), which prompted a lengthy discussion of online video’s impact on network capacity. The topic has become even more relevant in light of the potentially disruptive impact of the peer-to-peer IPTV app Joost (The Venice Project) and NetFlix’ announcement that it will stream full-length feature films.

Several providers, including Equinix, say video growth is driving strong demand for 10 gigabit Ethernet connections, high-capacity pipes that enable providers to move enormous volumes of traffic. But the volume of traffic generated by online video is altering the economics of these connections. In some cases, the financial benefits of big-pipe peering don’t offset the short-term expense of network upgrades needed to support 10 gigabit Ethernet equipment. While the parties can continue to peer over existing connections, the growing volume of video traffic could stress networks and affect performance.