Digital Realty To Buy St. Louis Buildings

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) said today that it is under contract to acquire three buildings in St. Louis for $80.7 million, including an Internet gateway, a data center, and a building that serves as a headquarters for a major managed hosting provider. Digital CEO Michael Foust said the transactions, which are scheduled to close later this month, would add 466,000 rentable square feet to the company's portfolio.

Digital Realty said it could not identify the specific buildings until after the deals closed. The major Internet gateway properties in St. Louis are the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings at 210 Tucker and 900 Walnut, which have been the most prominent telecom buildings in St. Louis since the late 1990s. There are a number of managed hosting companies headquartered in St. Louis, with the most prominent being Savvis Communications, which is also the largest tenant in Digital Realty Trust's portfolio of properties.

In the past year Digital Realty has focused its investment activity on the premier carrier hotels in major markets, purchasing 120 Van Buren in Phoenix, acquiring a 49 percent stake in the Westin Building in Seattle, and buying AboveNet facilities that included a data center at 111 8th Avenue, one of the primary carrier hotels in Manhattan.