'Data Center Park' Planned in Austin

Zydeco Development is planning a 350-acre "data center park" in Austin, Texas, and describes its ambitious plans in an article in Network World, which notes that the Met Center development is "part of a wave of new data center construction." Zydeco has equipped the site to support advanced data centers, including two electrical substations. Potential tenants have the option of either buying land and building their own facility or leasing a custom-built data center from Zydeco.

Zydeco president Howard Yancey  acknowledges that the company is betting big on the data center sector. But he believes it's an informed wager. "It's speculative in the sense that we're spending a bunch money for the infrastructure that we wouldn't normally spend for a typical business park," said Yancey. "We're spending that because we feel very strongly that demand is there. Could we be wrong? Yup. But we're going to make the investment anyway."

The article cites a number of sources articulating the reaons for increased demand (many of which will be familiar to h regular readers), especially the growing demand for power to support high-density sevrer installations, which is rendering many exsiting centers obsolete. "The demand right now is such that anybody who has a data center has a
very valuable piece of property," Ron Hughes of Califronia Data Center Design tells the magazine. "Whereas three years ago, you couldn't give them away."