Huge T-Mobile Lease at New Sabey Project

T-Mobile will lease 200,000 square feet of space at Intergate.Columbia, the Sabey Corp. data center project in East Wenatchee, Washington, according to local media. T-Mobile is the first tenant announced for the Sabey facility, which is projected to have a project cost of more than $100 million.

The primary T-Mobile’ data center in Bothell, Washington was flooded last month when torrential rains hit the Seattle area. The outage knocked the T-mobile website offline and disrupted new customer activations nationwide. Bothell is more vulnerable to flooding than other data center hubs in the Seattle area. East Wenatchee is in an area of central Washington that has seen a boom in data centers since 2006, when Microsoft announced a major new facility in Quincy to support its new online services.

Sabey Eyes Expansion in Quincy, Wash.

Data center developer Sabey Corp. is looking to expand its presence in central Washington, and has discussed purchasing land from the Port of Quincy, a large industrial park that is also home to Microsoft’s huge new data center. Sabey is already building a 100,000 square foot data center in Wenatchee.

The Port of Quincy is holding a meeting tonight to get public comment on whether it should sell land to Sabey. “They’ve made an inquiry and we’re trying to schedule a joint meeting between the commissioners and the Sabey group,” Port Commissioner Brian Kuest told the Columbia Basin Herald. “We’re not far enough along in the inquiry process to know exactly what Sabey’s needs are.”

Sabey says it is evaluating properties in the area and interested in discussing land values with property owners. It hasn’t made any commitments as yet, but Sabey has made no secret of its interest in the area. “We see North Central Washington as a very logical extension of our data center business,” Senior Vice President of Real Estate John Sabey said last August, when Sabey announced its Intergate.Columbia project. “We’re a long-time Northwest family and a long-time Northwest company, and we’re looking to be a part of East Wenatchee and the greater Wenatchee area for a long time as well.”

Additional development by Sabey would continue the influx of huge data centers in central Washington, including projects by Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com and Intuit in addition to Sabey.

Huge Power Draws for Google, Yahoo, Sabey

The Sabey Corp. has contracted with the Douglas County Public Utility District for 30 megawatts of electricity for its new Intergate.Columbia LLC data center in East Wenatchee, Wash., according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If the company were to use all of its contracted power, that would amount to about one-third of the PUD’s anticipated local demand of about 90 megawatts, said Bill Dobbins, general manager of Douglas County PUD. “This is a big deal,” said Dobbins.

There are even bigger deals right in the neighborhood, as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are building facilities in the area that have arranged for even larger amounts of power. Microsoft’s project in Quincy, Wash. has contracted for a maximum of 48 megawatts of power from the Grant County PUD. Yahoo is building a data center in Wenatchee and has contracted for 42 megawatts of power, according to the Seattle paper.

Sabey Plans $100M Facility in Wenatchee, Wa.

Developer Sabey Corp. said today that it will build a 100,000 square feet data center in East Wenatchee, Wash., continuing an inflow of major data centers into central Washington State. Yahoo and Microsoft are also building large data center facilities inn the Wenatchee/Quincy area.

The data center, tentatively named Intergate.Columbia, is expected to cost up to $100 million to construct and to be completed and operational by late 2007 or early 2008. The new facility will have the flexibility to house either a single large user or multiple tenants, according to the company’s Senior Vice President of Real Estate John Sabey.

Sabey plans to locate Intergate.Columbia on 30 acres near Pangborn Field. The company has a purchase option on the land, which has already been zoned for a business park, with the Battermann family. Terms of the planned purchase were not disclosed. The center will purchase its power from Douglas County Public Utility District (PUD), which recently approved a service contract for up to 30 megawatts of electricity. “Douglas County Public Utility District was very helpful throughout this process and will be instrumental in the success of this project,” Sabey said.

Sabey is a large developer based in Seattle with substantial expeirence in the data center business. It operates the Sabey Data Center, which includes a finished 120,000 square foot data center and 350,000 of expansion space. Sabey initially built the facility for Exodus, but bought it through the bankruptcy court after Exodus filed Chapter 11.