Digital Realty Buys Into Silicon Valley Project

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) has bought a 50 percent ownership interest in a joint venture partnership with W. Leslie Pelio & Associates for 1500 Space Park Drive, a data center development project located in Santa Clara, California. Digital Realty Trust will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the property. The planned 343,000 square foot project consists of an existing 50,000 square foot building and additional land to support the development of two new data center facilities totaling 293,000 square feet.

The deal continues the brisk data center activity in Santa Clara, which Digital Realty called "one of the markets of highest demand for data center space in the country with very limited supply of move-in ready facilities." On Tuesday Terremark announced that it had purchased two properties in Santa Clara to expand its existing NAP of the Americas West facilities. Equinix and Behringer Harvard also have data center expansions underway in Santa Clara.

"We are very pleased to be partnering with Pelio & Associates on this key datacenter development project in the heart of Silicon Valley's preferred location for datacenter space," said Michael Foust, CEO of Digital Realty Trust. "It is located immediately adjacent to our 1100 Space Park facility and within one mile of our other Santa Clara buildings.

"This site is uniquely positioned to satisfy the extensive power and data network criteria of the most sophisticated corporate datacenter requirements," Foust added. "Initially, we plan to build-out and lease more than 34,000 square feet of Turn-Key Datacenter space in the existing building and will finalize plans to develop the balance of the site in response to market demand."

"We are thrilled to have a first class partner such as Digital Realty Trust join us in this exciting venture," said Les Pelio, founder and senior partner of W. Leslie Pelio & Associates. "This site is arguably the best data center location in Silicon Valley, known locally as 'Datacenter Row.' The phased approach of this large project at 1500 Space Park Drive offers tenants absolutely unique expansion opportunities and flexibility."

In June Pelio announced that it planned to have the Santa Clara data center project qualify as a "green" facility under the LEED certification system from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Green data centers are a focus for Digital Realty Trust, which just conducted a survey on energy-efficient data centers.

Digital Realty Trust now manages 66 properties comprising approximately 11.9 million rentable square feet in 26 markets throughout North America and Europe.