Internet Gateway Opens on Long Island

A data center in Westbury, N.Y. hopes to emerge as a traffic hub for network providers on Long Island. The Long Island Data and Recovery Center at 1025 Old Country Road opened for business on Sept. 21, and wants to provide local companies and providers with an alternative to routing their Internet traffic through Manhattan. The facility was featured in the Long Island Business News on Friday.

The LIDARC facility will be included in a "Manhattan Bypass Network" being built by Optical Communications Group, which is running submarine cables from Brooklyn to Staten Island and Staten Island to New Jersey. The facility also has connectivity through KeySpan, which provides access to five transatlantic cable landings on Long Island, located in Shirley, Brookhaven, Island Park, Northport and Bellport.

"This building will be a critical link to Northeast and to the country," according to Keith Samaroo, an associate principal at project engineer Paulus Sokolowski & Sartor. "It's a homeland security strategy. Right now, there aren't too many buildings that actually bypass Manhattan."

The LIDARC facility is 175,000 square feet, and is planning to develop the first phase of the center in 4,000 square foot installments, with subsequent built-to-suit modules of up to 15,000 square foot (the footprint of each floor in a three-story section of the facility). The site is supported by an 850kW generator.

Among the advisors on the Westbury project is Hunter Newby, Chief Strategy Office of Telx, which operates the meet-me-rooms at Manhattan's two premier carrier hotels, 60 Hudson Street and 111 Eighth Avenue.