Power Loft Gets First Tenant in Virginia

powerloft-aug5

The Power Loft data center in Manassas, Va. being readied for its first tenant. The facility is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Power Loft LLC has secured the first tenant for its innovative data center project in Manassas, Virginia, the company said this week. The new customer is identified only as an international IT consulting and outsourcing organization.

The Power Loft lease is significant because it clears the way for a new data center provider to bring a major facility online with a tenant in place. The current environment has been challenging for new data centers seeking anchor tenants, as many prospects have opted for established developers and familiar designs.

Power Loft has focused on power efficiency in its 200,000 square foot, two-story data center, which physically separates the servers and mechanical/electrical infrastructure.

Second-floor "Loft" for Servers
The Manassas facility features 100,000 square feet of raised floor space on the upper floor, while the ground level houses air handling units (AHUs) that  deliver cold air through the ceiling and into the under-floor plenum of the second story. The hot air is retrieved through a ceiling plenum, and then returned to the lower floor through channels along the side of the building.

An adjacent facility houses the Hitec rotary UPS (flywheel) and switchgear, while another building is dedicated to the generators and chillers. By using a “hard separation” between the server area and the mechanical equipment, Power Loft says it is able to maximize every square foot of the temperature-controlled raised floor area.

"Our solution is a design that accommodates 50 percent more racks and 100 percent more critical power in the same area as legacy data centers, but with significant reductions to the cost of operation," said Jim Coakley, President and CEO of Power Loft.

LEED Silver Anticipated
Power Loft anticipates gaining Silver-level certification through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, a voluntary rating system for energy efficient buildings overseen by the US Green Building Council. The new tenant is scheduled to be fully installed in the fourth quarter of 2009.

"The first deal is always the hardest, particularly when a new team is offering the market a departure in design," said Coakley. "This tenant understood all of those risks and was very deliberate in their due diligence of our engineering approach, our financial backing and the experience of our development team."

Power Loft is backed by the real estate investment fund Iron Point Real Estate Partners, a real estate fund with offices in Washington, D.C. and Dallas. Other companies involved in the project include HP Critical Facilities Services (EYP MCF), Clark Construction, VOA Architects, and Fortress International Group, Inc. (Total Site Solutions and Rubicon Professional Services).

Power Loft is also developing a 230,000 square foot data center with a similar design on a 23-acre site the company owns in the Westover Hills section of San Antonio.

powerloft-aerial

An aerial view of the Power Loftt LLC development in Manassas.