Newby’s Netrality Buys 25-Story Houston Data Center and Carrier Hotel

Netrality, a joint venture between real estate firm Amerimar Enterprises and entrepreneur Hunter Newby, has bought a large Houston data center and carrier hotel at 1301 Fannin Street.

The deal is strategic for Netrality. Houston is an important network connectivity hub because of a high volume of network carriers and because of its proximity and direct network links to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico, which is so important to the U.S. oil and gas industry, Houston’s biggest economic driver.

The building’s tenants include data center providers and enterprise data centers. Example of the former is Internap, and example of the latter is Exxon Mobil. The oil and gas giant, ranked as the second-largest publicly traded company in the U.S. on the Fortune 500 list, has its global data center in the building, according to Foursquare.

The seller was Griffin Partners, which bought the building in a joint venture with CenterSquare Investment Management Fund in 2007. The companies did not disclose acquisition price in the recent Netrality transaction.

The 25-story building has 1.1 million square feet total, including about 400,000 square feet of data center space. It offers access to more than a dozen network carriers.

Netrality plans to build an additional carrier-neutral meet-me room for its Houston data center and network provider customers by mid-2015. There is also room to build up to 100,000 square feet of additional data center space in the building.

The company has contracted real-estate brokerage Lee and Associates, a Griffin affiliate, to lease the space that is currently vacant.

“As the fourth largest city in the United States, Houston is a critical location for network operators,” Newby said in a statement. “Further, its proximity and direct network access to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico make it a global gateway and therefore strategic for us and our customers.”

Newby and Amerimar have been buying carrier hotels with carrier-neutral meet-me rooms in top U.S. data center markets for about three years. The joint venture got its name (Netrality) only this year, in January.

Netrality owns buildings in New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Chicago, and now also Houston.