Bloomberg Plans $710 Million Data Center in N.Y. Suburb

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An illustration depicting what a new data center planned for Orangetown, New York might look like, from a marketing brochure by site owner Russo Development. Bloomberg LP has been identified as the tenant.

Financial media giant Bloomberg L.P. is planning to build a $710 million data center in Orangetown, N.Y., a northern suburb of New York City not far from a major data hub for the New York Stock Exchange, according to local media. The Bloomberg project is at a location owned by Russo Development Corp., a New Jersey developer that has built large data centers for the financial industry.

Russo's previous projects include the NYSE Euronext trading hub in Mahwah, New Jersey, which is about 12 miles from the Bloomberg site in Orangetown. Bloomberg, which was founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, provides financial news and data through its ubiquitous Bloomberg terminal, a fixture on the desk of traders and analysts.

On Tuesday Bloomberg L.P. told local officials that it plans to invest $710 million at its site over the next 15 years. The company has asked the Rockland Industrial Development Agency for a sales-tax break and unspecified financial assistance to offset the $435 million initial investment required to renovate and equip the facility.

The project is expected to provide jobs for 250 construction workers over 18 months. About 80 people will be employed at the data center after construction, the company told local officials.

Sturdy Power Infrastructure

The site in Rockland County is about 25 miles north of New York, and is notable for its sturdy electrical infrastructure, according to documents from Russo, which purchased the property from Verizon in 2009. The property is adjacent to a utility substation supplied by subterranean 138kV transmission lines in a ring bus configuration. Up to four 13kV circuits are available to the property, supplied directly from the substation in concrete encased duct banks with a capacity of up to 10 megawatts per circuit, for a total utility capacity of 40 megawatts.

Russo Development has built more than 1.7 million square feet of data center space for companies including NYSE Euronext, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, Cervalis and SunGard Availability Services.

The Bloomberg site isn't the only data center project in the works in Orangetown area. 1547 Realty Partners is marketing a data center property in Orangeburg, a hamlet within Orangetown. The developer says the data center will have an initial capacity of 24 megawatts from dual feeds, with a future substation planned that can boost capacity to 50 megawatts.