Seattle Parking Garage to Become A Data Center

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The Westin Building in Seattle, where an adjacent parking garage is being transformed into a data center by Digital Realty Trust, Clise Properties and Equinix. (Photo: Rich Miller)

A parking garage in Seattle will soon become a major new data center for Equinix, with up to 1,000 cabinets of servers and storage replacing parked cars. The new facility will be located next to the Westin Building, the leading Internet hub in Seattle.

The Equinix data center will be jointly developed by Digital Realty Trust and Clise Properties, who will transform a six-story parking garage into a new facility that will nclude four floors of data center space. Digital Realty and Clise are 50-50 partners in both the Westin Building and the new project for Equinix.

Major New Capacity for Equinix

The new data center will add significant capacity for Equinix, which has two data centers in Seattle, including one at the Westin Bulding. It also reflects Seattle's growth as a data center market, and an important gateway to the Asia-Pacific market.

The new Equinix site will add approximately 51,000 square feet of data center space and capacity for more than 1,000 cabinet equivalents, and support 4.1 megawatts of IT capacity. Equinix expects to invest approximately $60 million to build the new IBX data center, which is estimated to open in Q1 2013.

"We continue to see strong demand for Platform Equinix in the Seattle market, and we are investing in the Pacific Northwest to support the requirements of our expanding customer base," said Charles Meyers, President of the Americas for Equinix. "By leveraging the real estate acquisitions and construction expertise of Digital Realty and Clise Properties, Inc. we will be able to bring our new Seattle IBX data center online quickly and efficiently."

Build-to-Suit Approach

Equinix has signed a build-to-suit agreement with  Digital Realty (DLR) and Clise Properties, Inc., who will be responsible for funding the base building improvements and data center shell construction. This is the second project on which Digital Realty is building a custom facility for Equinix, as the two companies are working together on a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia.

"This year we have seen a significant increase in demand for our build-to-suit data center solution from customers that have large expansion requirements, such as Equinix," said Michael F. Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty. "With our financial resources and acquisitions and development expertise, we can readily deliver to customers even the most complex projects on time and on budget. We are very pleased to expand our successful partnership with the Clise organization on this important new facility."

"We are very pleased to be working with Digital Realty on this important project for Equinix," said A. M. Clise, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Clise Properties, Inc. "We have worked in close partnership with Digital Realty for a number of years at the Westin building, the Northwest region's premier Internet Gateway data center. This new project represents our shared commitment to successfully meet our customers' ongoing data center requirements."