Seattle Telecom Hub Fisher Plaza Is For Sale

Fisher Plaza, a major data center and communications hub in Seattle, is for sale. Fisher Communications, Inc. (FSCI) said today that it is “exploring alternatives for its real estate holdings,” including Fisher Plaza.

Fisher Plaza is a Class A office, data center and retail campus near the Space Needle with approximately 294,000 rentable square feet. In 2008, Fisher expects the property to generate approximately $7.5 million in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

Internap (INAP) has a significant data center presence at Fisher Plaza, while other industry tenants include Adhost, Cogent Communications (CCOI), Electric Lightwave, AboveNet, Global Crossing, Time Warner Telecom and Qwest. Fisher Plaza also operates its own colocation space in the building

King County Plans $21M Lease in Tukwila

The county executive of King County, Washington has proposed spending $21 million to lease data center space in Tukwila, a Seattle suburb that is home to many existing data centers. The King County Council had previously considered buying and upgrading a building at 1130 Rainier Avenue in downtown Seattle, but ultimately dropped those plans in favor of the Tukwila lease. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a story that reviews the debate about the county’s decisions on its data center requirements.

The 1130 Rainier site, which was once the headquarters of digital music company Loudeye, would have housed the county’s elections equipment in addition to the data center. The county opted to lease space in Renton for the elections office, and seek separate digs for its data center. Critics say that splitting the data center and elections office requirements will be $15 million more than the estimated cost of buying and retrofitting the Seattle site, but some council members say the estimate for a rehab of 1130 Rainier may be on the low side.

Ask.com Plans Washington St. Data Center

Search engine Ask.com has signed a lease for a data center in an existing building in Moses Lake, Washington, according to John Cook of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who said the company declined to name the building or specify the size of the data center.

Ask.com’s decision continues the data center building boom in central Washington State, where four other major projects are already underway. Microsoft has announced plans for a huge data center complex in Quincy, as has Intuit. Meanwhile, Yahoo and Sabey Corp. are starting projects in nearby Wenatchee.

Internap Expands Again in Seattle

Internap (INAP) plans to add approximately 20,000 square feet to its Seattle data center real estate, marking its second expansion in six months in the Seattle market. Citing strong customer demand, Internap will lease space from Sabey Corporation at its Intergate data center in Tukwila, just outside Seattle. The deal includes an option to expand furtehr into an additional 30,000 square feet of contiguous data center space. The expansion increases Internap’s Seattle-area colocation footprint by 50 percent, and builds on an August expansion at Internap’s facility at Fisher Plaza in downtown Seattle. Completion is expected in June of 2007.

“This initiative is part of a strategic plan to enhance our data center offerings in key markets,” said James P. DeBlasio, chief executive officer of Internap. “With this expansion at Sabey, Internap now has its eighth managed facility, which demonstrates our commitment to serving our customers.”

Qwest Opens Seattle Data Center

Qwest Communications (Q) has opened a new “CyberCenter” in the Seattle area to provide hosting services to businesses, the company said this week. With the opening of the new data center, Qwest now operates 14 CyberCenters nationwide. New tenants in the center include Alaska Airlines.

“We are seeing a significant increase in the demand for Qwest managed hosting solutions, and the new Qwest CyberCenter will allow Qwest to expand the number of customers we can serve with leading broadband applications and network services,” said Dan Yost, executive vice president of product and marketing at Qwest. “Opening the newest facility in Seattle demonstrates Qwest’s continued success in the hosting arena and our ongoing commitment to providing the most comprehensive and secure solutions available.”

It’s interesting to see Qwest building additional data centers, as the company’s hosting unit experienced the full rollercoaster ride back in the dot-com boom. Qwest expanded vigorously, building 50,000 to 90,000 square foot Cybercenters in most major markets. At one time Qwest planned to build as many as 42 CyberCenters, funded partly by a $5 billion strategic alliance with IBM. But in late 2002 the company consolidated its network, shutting eight of its 16 data centers.

Microsoft Drops Suit Over Records Request

Microsoft has dropped a lawsuit against the city of Quincy, Wash. seeking to prevent the disclosure of public records the company filed concerning its huge new data center project in the town. Microsoft filed suit Nov. 30 seeking an injunction to block the city from complying with a public records request from an engineering firm seeking design and building plans Microsoft submitted for its data center. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after the request was withdrawn.

Microsoft began construction in Quincy in May, and much has been written about the facility. But Microsoft contended that the documents sought through the information request contained “intricate details” of its building project, City Administrator Tim Snead told the Columbia Basin Herald. “We protect the proprietary information we have for our software, for our products and certainly for our facilities, where we’re doing some unique things,” Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos told the paper.

We’ve previously noted the desire of major corporations to maintain secrecy about their data center projects (see Wal-Mart and the Fight Club Rule for more on this). But is it possible to maintain secrecy about a facility and still comply with local ordinances that require companies to file detailed plans about new construction?

Intuit Planning Data Center in Quincy, Wash.

Financial software giant Intuit is planning to build a data center in Quincy, Wash., which would become the fourth major data center project in the small central Washington town. Intuit, which makes Quicken and Quickbooks software, appeared before the Quincy City Counil Tuesday night to discuss its plans.

Three other major facilities are already planned for the area, which has become magnet for power-hungry data centers due to the availability of cheap hydro electricity from local dams, as well as advanced fiber infrastructure. Microsft has announced plans for a huge data center complex in Quincy, while Yahoo and Sabey Corp. are starting projects in nearby Wenatchee.

Digital Realty’s Westin Stake: 49 Percent

Digital Realty Trust paid $30.2 million to acquire a 49 percent stake in the Westin Building, Seattle’s premier Internet Gateway, according to company documents. The size of the payment and Digital Realty’s ownership position wasn’t detailed in the Nov. 2 press release announcing the investment, but was included in the company’s quarterly 10Q filing with the SEC.

The Westin Building (2001 Sixth Avenue) is a 34-story, 389,000 square foot tower that is 90% leased. Approximately 185,000 square feet is built out as technical space and supports a variety of telecom functions including colocation space and meet-me rooms. In an investor conference call, Digital Realty executives said the entire Westin Building was not for sale, so it bought a 49 percent interest from one of two partners in the building. Digital Realty had been discussing an interest in the Westin Building for more than two years, and is clearly excited about the deal.

Digital Realty Takes Stake in Westin Building

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) has acquired a “partial interest” in the Westin Building in Seattle, the leading Internet gateway in the Pacific Northwest. The investment was one of four deals announced today by Digital Realty, which also acquired data center facilities in the Boston and Miami markets and a warehouse in Tempe, Arizona for conversion to telecom use.

The release from Digital Realty doesn’t indicate the exact dollar value of its investment in the Westin Building, or the size of its partial ownership stake. The total price paid for the four transactions was $79.1 million, according to Digital Realty. Given the size and value of the Westin Building, and the inclusion of three other properties, that price suggests a minority ownership position.

The Westin Building (2001 Sixth Avenue) is a 34-story, 389,000 square foot tower that is 90% leased. Approximately 185,000 square feet is built out as technical space and supports a variety of telecom functions including colocation space and meet-me rooms.

“The addition to our portfolio of the Seattle Internet gateway facility, locally known as the Westin Building, represents a very strategic initial acquisition for us in this tier one market,” said Michael F. Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust. “It not only expands our national footprint into the Pacific Northwest, it also adds to our existing portfolio of mission critical Internet gateway facilities in Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix and Charlotte.”

Data Center Outages Bring Headaches, Headlines

July saw a steady stream of data center outages due to equipment failures, several of which attracted media attention. The latest incident to make headlines was an outage July 30 at Seattle’s Fisher Plaza, which is described by CRM Buyer today in a story titled Unsinkable Data Center Crashes in Seattle. The article digs into the cause of the downtime, which is in dispute, as Fisher Plaza cited an equipment problem after a Seattle City Light outage, but the power company says it was never offline.

The recent string of incidents provide a painful reminder that Murphy’s Law has jurisdiction over even the most wired data centers. An AFCOM member survey from April predicted that within the next five years power failures and shortages will halt data center operations (at least briefly) at more than 90% of all companies.

The uptime industry is in the business of trying to anticipate everything that can go wrong, and engineering solutions for even the most improbable scenarios. Although SLAs promising 100% uptime are common nowadays, stuff happens. “Failure is inevitable. Fail small,” said Richard Sawyer, Director of Data Center Technology for American Power Conversion, in discussing the AFCOM results. Outages are painful, but offer lessons as well. In that spirit, here’s a recap of some of the recent incidents: