Wall Street West Gets Data Center Tenant

A high-tech park in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains has landed a data center tenant as part of the state's Wall Street West initiative. Developer Larry Stuardi has just struck a deal with Computer Network Solutions of Plainview, N.Y. for a data center in 140,000 square foot facility in Breinigsville, Pa., according to local media. CNS says it plans to operate a colocation and managed hosting facility for clients in the financial services industries.

Stuardi's Tek Park is a seven-building complex that was originally developed by AT&T Bell Labs as a research center. Stuardi's development firm, MRA Group, bought the property from TriQuint Semiconductor last year for $9.3 million. TriQuint inherited the property in 2003 when it bought a division of Agere Systems, a Bell Labs spinoff. The park includes a 140,000 square foot facility that will serve as the CNS data center, which is wired for up to 150 watts per square foot of power. The property has its own sub station and six 2 megawatt generators.

CNS had previously leased office space in the area as a prelude to locating a data center site. According to The Allentown Morning Call, the firm signed a deal with Guardi after visting the Breinigsville site last week.

Stuardi is one of several local developers seeking to attract financial services firms to locate disaster recovery hot sites in then Poconos. Developer Larry Simon is seeking to line up anchor data center tenants for The Penn Regional Business Center, a proposed 300,000 square foot development scheduled to break ground in Monroe County in June 2007.

The Wall Street West initiative is backed by a $15 million investment from the federal government and more than $6 million from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Local and state officials believe they can build a successul project atop data backup mandates from the Federal Reserve, SEC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terroist attacks, regulators tasked the financial services industry to develop a backup plan that would allow for a same-day recovery from a "regional disaster" affecting New York and its immediate suburbs.