DBSi Plans Data Center in Wall Street West

Disaster recovery specialist Data Based Systems International, Inc. (DBSi) is building a 228,600 square foot data center in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley as part of the state’s Wall Street West initiative, the company said Friday. DBSi has begun work on its Advanced Technology Center (ATC) on the TEK Park campus in Breinigsville, Pa. and hopes to complete the facility late this year.

TEK Park is a seven-building complex that was originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs as a research center. The MRA Group bought the property from TriQuint Semiconductor in 2005 for $9.3 million. TriQuint inherited the property in 2003 when it bought a division of Agere Systems, a Bell Labs spinoff.

“The addition of TEK Park further enables DBSi to provide the greater New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Central Pennsylvania corporate markets with secure hosting and disaster recovery services outside of the metro threat zones,” said William Bachenberg, CEO of DBSi. “The existing power infrastructure at TEK Park will allow the facility to support very high density deployments of blade servers and other technologies.

Castle Access Plans San Diego Colo Facility

San Diego colocation provider Castle Access is building a new 88,000 square foot data center to meet growing demand from its enterprise clients, the company said this week. The facility will be located in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., and the company plans to bring the first 10,000 square feet of colocation space online by November 1.

The facility will be carrier-neutral and will offer multiple Tier 1 fiber carriers. Castle Access says the new data center will be supported by two 2-megawatt high power Caterpillar backup generators, two 5,000-gallon double-lined fuel tanks, dry-pipe pre-action fire suppression, a VESDA fire detection system, dual 12 kV power feeds and 880 tons of cooling capacity.

Relief in Sight for Sinking Tennessee Data Center

Last July we noted reports that the state of Tennessee’s primary data center is slowly sinking, prompting the state to invest $68 million to build two new data centers in Nashville and Smyrna, which were scheduled to be ready in 2010. It looks like that schedule has been moved up, as ComputerWorld reports that the state has accelerated construction on the first new data center in Smyrna and may begin transferring critical applications and data out of the sinking Nashville facility as soon as the first quarter of 2009.

ComputerWorld notes that the state of Tennessee’s facility is “located in the worse spot in America for a data center - on an unstable landfill, next to a railroad and a river and downstream from a large dam that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says has a risk of failing.” The center requires constant monitoring, and some areas are too unstable for storing heavy computer equipment. “The back end of it, it sinks into the old landfill, and we have to prop it up, apparently on a fairly routine basis, so it’s not secure,” state Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz said last year. Goetz noted at the time that “if the Wolf River Dam breaks (the data center) will be under about 12 feet of water, which is hard on computers.”

Testing the Math on Data Center Incentives

What’s a data center worth to the local economy? How about a data center engineer?

As state and local economic development agencies step up their efforts to attract major data center projects with incentive packages, they should expect scrutiny from constituents. That’s certainly the case in North Carolina, where an incentive package for Google’s $600 million data center in Lenoir became a political hot potato last year. Now local officials in Research Triangle area have agreed to offer IBM $750,000 in economic development incentives if Big Blue decides to build a new data center in Research Triangle Park. An excerpt from the Right Angles blog:

The commissioners unanimously committed $750,000 over a seven-year period if IBM builds the facility here. The company is also considering locations in New York and Colorado. … The facility will be somewhat unusual in that it would only create 10 jobs but is expected to bring at least 1,000 executives a year here to visit the center. Over five years, the data center would generate $4.4 million in visitor spending, which in turn would translate into $150,000 in local tax money, Shelley Green of the DCVB said.

As we’ve noted, data centers are odd birds by economic development standards because they typically are so automated that they create very few new jobs - which has long been the standard by which incentives are developed and judged. The growth of data center incentives programs suggests that economic development officials no longer debate this point very much. But taxpayers are likely to continue to keep score.

Data Cave Plans Indiana Data Center

An Indiana company has announced plans to build an 80,000 square foot data center near Columbus, Indiana, with the state providing more than $300,000 in incentives to get the project off the ground. The data center will be built and operated by Data Cave Inc., a new company spun off from Analytical Engineering, Inc. (AEI)

Data Cave said the two-story facility adjacent to AEI’s headquarters in Columbus is expected to cost about $7 million to build, and will create 25 new jobs. The company said it will begin construction of the new data center in July and will begin hiring IT staff later this year.

“Creating an environment that attracts new job-creating investment from Hoosier companies and from businesses around the world is essential to Indiana’s economic success,” said Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. “Analytical Engineering’s decision to start Data Cave and invest in Indiana is an indication that the environment we have created is working.”

Jones Lang LaSalle to Acquire Staubach Co.

In a combination of two real estate firms with expertise in the data center sector, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) has agreed to buy Staubach Co. in a deal valued at $725 million. A possible combination between the two companies has been widely rumored in recent weeks.

Staubach Co. was founded in 1977 by Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, who will join the JLL board of directors and will be “actively involved” in the combined firm, serving in the new role of executive chairman for the Americas. Staubach specializes in representing tenants of office, industrial and retail space. The transaction does not include Staubach Retail Services or Cypress Equities, Staubach’s investment-development business, which will both continue operations under license agreements.

Another Data Center for Birmingham, Alabama

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama plans to invest $55 million to build a new data center in Birmingham, according to local media. The new facility is the third significant data center project announced this month in Birmingham, the largest city in Alabama with a population of approximately 250,000.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans to buy 25 acres in Jefferson Metropolitan Park Lakeshore, a deal that was authorized by the Jefferson County Economic and Industrial Development Authority board of directors. The company plans to build a 55,000-square-foot center in Birmingham’s Oxmoor Valley, with plans to occupy the building in 2010.

Birmingham is one of the most affordable markets in the U.S> to operate a data center, according to a recent study by The Boyd Company, which found that it costs approximately $12.6 million in total operating costs to locate a data center facility in Birmingham, placing it 11th on the list of most affordable markets.

$60M in Alabama Data Center Development

It’s been a good week for Birmingham, Alabama, which has seen the announcement of two significant data center development projects:

• AT&T has announced that it will invest $40 million to upgrade its data center in Hoover, Alabama. The renovation process will take approximately 20 months, according to a company spokesperson. The upgrade is part of an ongoing expansion of AT&T’s global data center network.
• The Southern Co., the Atlanta-based parent of Alabama Power Co., said that it will invest approximately $20 million to build a new data center in Birmingham to support its operations across the Southeast. The 72,000 square foot facility will be located at a site in Jefferson Metropolitan Park Lakeshore in the Oxmoor Valley.

The projects in Birmingham provide yet another example of the growing demand for data center services in second-tier regional markets beyond traditional telecom hubs in New York, northern Virginia, Silicon Valley, Dallas and Chicago.