VMware Plans Major Data Center in Wenatchee

VMware has become the latest tech titan to locate a major data center in central Washington. The virtualization market leader will lease more than 100,000 square feet of space in a new facility being built by Sabey Corp. in its Intergate.Columbia development in East Wenatchee, Wash.

The huge lease is another big win for Sabey, which has already leased the entire first building at Intergate.Columbia to T-Mobile. The VMware deal means that Sabey has pre-leased the vast majority of space at Intergate.Columbia. The VMware lease, which was reported today by the Wenatchee World, will take up about two-thirds of the 189,000 square foot second building.

VMware joins a growing list of companies that are building or leasing data center space in central Washington, where cheap hydro power from the dams along the Columbia River has proven to be a magnet for massive data center projects. Microsoft, Yahoo, Intuit, Ask.com and Base Partners already have data center projects in the area.

Sabey announced its East Wenatchee data center project in August 2006. The company's initial plans for Intergate.Columbia called for two data centers totaling approximately 380,000 square feet of space, along with a 75,000 square foot office building.

Sabey Corporation has built and currently operates some of the largest data centers in the country, including Seattle's 76-acre Intergate technology campus, one of the nation's largest multi-tenant Internet complexes, along with other past operations in Los Angeles and Denver. It operates the Sabey Data Center, which includes a finished 120,000 square foot data center and 350,000 of expansion space.