A view of bey.comthe Intergate.Columbia data center complex built by Sabey Corp. in Wenatchee, Washington.

Sabey Corp. has obtained a Gold LEED certification for the shell and core for Building B of its Intergate.Columbia  complex in Wenatchee, Wash., while tenant VMware has received a Platinum LEED certification for the critical infrastructure for its data center in building B.

Platinum is the highest rating possible under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings overseen by the US Green Building Council, while Gold is the second-highest rating. The VMware data center is one of just seven LEED Platinum data centers.

Building B at Intergate.Columbia is a 188,000 square foot facility supported by 22 megawatts of utility power. Sabey Construction was the general contractor for both VMware’s tenant improvements and for the core and shell.

In its announcement today, Sabey noted that the LEED standard was designed primarily for office buildings, and that data centers with LEED certification often have a high ratio of office to data center floor. VMware’s premises are comprised of just 15 percent office space, with 85 percent dedicated to data center operations.

Construction of the shell, core and critical infrastructure for Building B, from grading to commissioning, was completed in approximately 9 months.   

Sabey’s data centers are located in the Pacific northwest and designed to take full advantage of the area’s natural climate to capture energy savings. “The climate enables evaporative economizer cooling for most of the year,” said John Ford, Director of Technology Real Estate for Sabey. “That alone accounts for 50 to 70 percent energy savings.”

Sabey also incorporates hot aisle encapsulation into its designs to isolate hot and cold air within the facility, as well as an overhead cooling design that drives improved use of space by removing the raised floor.

Seattle-based Sabey recently said that it will expand its data center operations beyond the Pacific northwest through a partnership with National Real Estate Advisors.

Rows of server racks inside the Sabey Corp. Intergate.Columbia data center complex in Wenatchee, Wash.

Sabey Corporation has partnered with National Real Estate Advisors to form a new venture that will expand Sabey’s data center operations beyond its core market in the Pacific northwest, the companies said Thursday.

The new company, Sabey DataCenter Properties, will include Sabey’s existing data center developments. NREA will have a minority equity interest and will invest $100 million, which will be used to support the current portfolio and finance growth in new markets.

Sabey is not identifying any of the markets where it may eventually operate data centers. But the company has forged a strong track record in building energy-efficient facilities, and its expansion comes at a time of growing interest in data centers built to the highest efficiency standards.

NREA is a real estate investment management and advisory firm owned by National Electrical Benefit Fund (NEBF), a multi-billion dollar pension plan that provides retirement benefits to employees in the electrical industry.

Sabey Corp. is a privately-held, Seattle-based commercial real estate development and construction services company that builds and operates data centers, medical facilities, office space and mixed-use properties. The company has built more than 27 million square feet of commercial, industrial and residential space and manages three million square feet of its own commercial and technology space.

Sabey has more than 20 years of experience in the data center business and is perhaps the largest provider of hydro-powered facilities in the United States. The company controls more than 1.7 million square feet of data center space in Washington state that will form the nucleus of Sabey DataCenter Properties.

Its properties include the huge Intergate.East and Intergate.West developments in the Seattle suburb of Tukwila and the Intergate.Columbia project in Wenatchee, Wash. Sabey is also building a data center complex in Quincy, Wash. that will be called Intergate.Quincy.

Doug Webster, Howard Loewenberg, and Justin Puccio of Signal Hill and Jim Kerrigan, Director of National Datacenter Group of Grubb and Ellis provided financial advisory services on the transaction. Scott Greenburg and Robert Starin, of K&L Gates LLP provided legal services.

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.

Sabey Corp. decided to build the campus in Quincy after its leasing success at its Intergate.Columbia in nearby East Wenatchee, where T-Mobile and VMware signed on as tenants within a year of groundbreaking. Sabey, a Seattle-based developer, began evaluating prospects for a data center in Quincy in 2007, and has listed the project on its web site for several months.

The new development continues the data center building boom in central Washington, where Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com and Intuit, have opened large data centers, drawn by the area’s low power rates and clean hydro-electric power from nearby dams on the Columbia River. Sabey notes that while the other projects are company-built and operated, Intergate.Sabey is “wholesale” data center space designed for companies who prefer to lease rather than own.

“It’s clear that the concept of leasing makes sense to major data center operators,” said John Ford, Director of Technology Real Estate for Sabey Corporation. “Our tenants design their interior modifications, while we provide them the economies of scale for shell and core. We also offer the infrastructure and mechanical system options to make their operations and budgets much more efficient.”

Like other data centers in Quincy, the Sabey facilities will benefit from a low carbon footprint due to its use of hydro power rather than coal-based electricity as well as the favorable climate for evaporative cooling to boost energy efficiency.

Sabey has submitted plans for a 50-megawatt data center campus similar to Intergate.Columbia, with two 186,000 square foot data centers, and two smaller buildings on a 40-acre site it purchased from the Port of Quincy.

Intergate.Quincy will be designed and constructed by the same team that completed Intergate.Columbia, including Sabey Construction, Inc., Callison Architecture, The McKinstry Company, Veca Electrical, Engineers Northwest and ESW Consultants.

The new data centers are already boosting tax revenues. At last week’s ceremony to mark the opening og the T-Mobile project, Douglas County Commissioner Ike Stanton said the county’s sales tax revenue jumped 280 percent in a single year, increasing from $220,000 in February 2008 to $838,000 in February 2009. “We refer to this in Douglas County as our own, federal stimulus package, because it’s been very good for Douglas County,” Stanton said, according to the Wenatchee World.

Sabey announced the East Wenatchee data center project in August 2006. The company’s project includes two data centers totaling approximately 380,000 square feet of space, along with a 75,000 square foot office building.

Sabey isn’t done building in the area, either. The Seattle-based company developer has bought land in Quincy for another data center project known as Intergate.Quincy. Additional development by Sabey would continue the influx of huge data centers in central Washington, including projects by Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com and Intuit.

Sabey has submitted plans for a 50-megawatt data center campus similar to Intergate.Columbia, with two 186,000 square foot data centers, and two smaller buildings on a 40-acre site it purchased from the Port of Quincy, according to an update on the project from the Columbia Basin Herald.   

Sabey Corporation has built and currently operates some of the largest data centers in the country, including Seattle’s 76-acre Intergate technology campus, one of the nation’s largest multi-tenant Internet complexes, along with other past operations in Los Angeles and Denver. It operates the Sabey Data Center, which includes a finished 120,000 square foot data center and 350,000 of expansion space.

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 announced the East Wenatchee data center project in August 2006. The company’s plans call for two data centers totaling approximately 380,000 square feet of space, along with a 75,000 square foot office building. The project is scheduled for completion late this year or in early 2009.

The Douglas County Public Utility District recently completed a power substation to supply the data center. Sabey has arranged for up to 30 megawatts of electricity from the PUD, and will pay for about 80 percent of the substation’s estimated $7.9 million cost, according to PUD officials.

Sabey Corporation has built and currently operates some of the largest data centers in the country, including Seattle’s 76-acre Intergate technology campus, one of the nation’s largest multi-tenant Internet complexes, along with other past operations in Los Angeles and Denver. 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.

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.

The projects add up to more than 1.5 million square feet of data centers on 200-plus acres, according to Washington economic development officials, who say the region has become become “an example of how the world’s most innovative companies are leveraging small-town America.”

“The combination of fiber connectivity, network availability, low-cost power and a great team of community members made central Washington the right choice for Yahoo! to build our next state-of-the-art data centers,” said Kevin Timmons, vice president of operations at Yahoo!. “Grant County offers the resources needed to continue to scale our infrastructure to provide the best Internet experience for our 500 million users.”

“This is only the beginning,” said Terry Brewer, Executive Director for the Grant County EDC. “As these data centers come online there are going to be lots of support businesses locating nearby. We are going to continue to see growth from this for years to come.”

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.

The Grant County PUD owns and operates the two-dam Priest Rapids Project on the Columbia River in central Washington. Together, the Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams make up one of the nation’s largest hydropower developments, with the capacity to produce 2,000 megawatts of electricity

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.

Attractive power rates and very competitive land costs were two of the key factors in the company’s decision to locate in Douglas County, according to Sabey. He also cited the area’s geological stability, good transportation links to high tech centers throughout the Western US, a solid and intelligent workforce, and a high quality of life for data center employees.

“We see North Central Washington as a very logical extension of our data center business,” Sabey said. “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.”

Sabey Corp. is exploring the possibility of installing an advanced thermal recovery system that would capture some of the heat generated by the data center’s computers for reuse, offering a secondary industry an opportunity on the site.

“This will be a significant construction project and create 30-50 new family-wage jobs in the area,” Sabey said. “The jobs created and the additional tax base generated represent opportunities for current residents to benefit from the wise investments the area has made in utility and communication infrastructure.”

“We’re also looking forward to working with community leaders to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce a number of the leading Internet commerce and technology firms to the advantages of North Central Washington,” Sabey added.

Sabey Corporation has built and currently operates some of the largest data centers in the country, including Seattle’s 76-acre Intergate technology campus, one of the nation’s largest multi-tenant Internet complexes, along with other past operations in Los Angeles and Denver.

Sabey Corporation is a $400 million real-estate development, construction services and investment company that has built 27 million square feet of commercial, industrial and residential space; manages three million square feet of its own commercial and technology space, and has invested in companies valued at more than $500 million.