Continuum Plans New Data Center in Chicago Suburbs

continuum-westchicago

Continuum Data Centers will open a new colocation center in this facility in West Chicago, Ill., the company said today. (Photo: Continuum)

The team from Continuum Data Centers is expanding with a new data center in the Chicago suburbs, where it plans to provide enterprise colocation services. The new facility will be attractive to financial trading companies interested in proximity to the nearby CME data center.

New Continuum Holdings Corporation said it has entered into a long-term lease on a property in West Chicago, Ill. that was developed for data center use in 2007. The tenant at that time, Cyber Continuity, never completed the build-out of the facility. New Continuum - a holding company formed by Continuum executives Eli Scher, Gary Chaffin and Tom Chaffin - will have an option to purchase the facility, while Continuum Data Centers will operate the colocation facility.

Continuum will complete construction on the facility at 603 Discovery Drive to create a Tier III, fully redundant data center built to N+1 specifications. It expects to begin installing customers in the summer of 2014. The property sits on  20 acres of land and is supported by multiple power grids offering access to up to 48 megawatts of power.

Significantly, the new facility is in close proximity to the CME Group data center in Aurora, the focal point of electronic trading for the commodities exchange. Continuum has a solid footprint in the financial trading sector at its first Chicago-area data center in Lombard, Ill.

Chicago Market Looks Strong

"Continuum plans to create the ultimate in risk aversion data centers in Chicago,” said Tom Chaffin, COO of Continuum Data Centers. "The market for Tier III colocation in Chicago is one of the strongest in the nation, and we believe our product offering at the West Chicago facility addresses the many significant needs of customers. Moreover, the location of the facility relative to the new CME data center three miles away in Aurora provides an interesting alternative to financial firms looking to efficiently house their less latency sensitive applications."

"I am thrilled to be working with Gary and Tom on this transaction," said Scher. "I am confident that together we can build on the strong foundation that CDC has established and deliver value and quality service to our customers for years to come."

The West Chicago data center will have above ground fuel tanks and an on-premises pumping station for its standby generators providing 72 hours of continuous run time at full critical load. There are four 2.5 megawatt generators installed on the site, and the entire facility is cooled by a water based evaporation/recirculation plant. The cooling systems boast a total of 140,000 gallons from a four tank in-ground water system with four 700 ton chilling towers, and four 770 ton parallel turbines. The in-ground tanks use the earth’s natural cooling to reduce energy costs, and free cooling heat exchangers help improve the facility's efficiency.