REIT Pays $211M for Chicago Data Center

Ascent, a leading provider of comprehensive data center solutions, announced this week that it had sold the Ascent CH2 Data Center Facility in Northlake, Illinois for $211.7 million to Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, Inc. The 250,000 square foot multi-tenant facility features Ascent's Dynamic Data Center Suite model and colocation suites and was designed for a broad range of customers with diverse computing and power density requirements. As part of the deal, Ascent will continue to work directly with current and future tenants through its operation of the Facility and will manage all data center development, design, construction, engineering and operational services.

"Partnering with CVMC REIT allows Ascent to concentrate on building out our current portfolio of data center facilities and increase strategic investment in the development of future locations," said Phil Horstmann, CEO of Ascent. "CVMC REIT's commitment to the data center space is the perfect complement to our design, construction and operational capabilities, strengthening our ability to provide current and future customers with the innovative solutions and mission-critical services they demand."

"Given this property's desirable location and long term leases with high-quality tenants, we believe that the Chicago Data Center is a great addition to our growing portfolio of mission critical real estate assets. We look forward to our relationship with Ascent, a recognized leader in the data center industry, who will continue to manage and develop the property for CVMC REIT," stated Michael Seton, President of Carter/Validus Advisors, the advisor to CVMC REIT.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

Digital Realty Trust Acquires Data Center for $37M

San Francisco-based Digital Realty Trust announced this week that it had completed the acquisition of a 329,000 square foot data center facility in Eagan, Minnesota for $37 million. Structured as a sale-leaseback deal, Digital Realty purchased the facility from Delta Air Lines, which has signed an eight-year, triple net lease with Digital Realty for the facility.

"The acquisition of Towerview further expands our footprint in a key U.S. market and deepens our relationship with an existing customer—a major commercial airline with an extensive domestic and international network," said Michael Foust, chief executive officer of Digital Realty. "We look forward to continuing to work with Delta Air Lines to support their future data center requirements."

"We are beginning to see more enterprise customers, such as Delta, looking to Digital Realty to help them monetize their real estate assets while continuing to support their critical operations with a well-capitalized, long-term data center owner," said Scott Peterson, chief acquisitions officer of Digital Realty. "Our deep financial resources, acquisitions experience, and reputation with customers and sellers enable us to source and structure these complex transactions while achieving an attractive return for our shareholders."

Set on 39 acres of land, 1500 Towerview Road is a three-level facility with approximately 86,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

Hartz Sells Secaucus Industrial Property for $18.4M

Hartz Mountain Real Estate has closed the sale of 2 Emerson Lane in Secaucus, New Jersey with CoreSite Realty Corporation taking the leasehold interest in the industrial facility for $18.4 million. HFF's investment sales team, led by managing director Michael Nachamkin, represented Hartz in the transaction.

CoreSite Realty Corporation is the data center service provider chosen by more than 750 of the world's leading carriers and mobile operators, content and cloud providers, media and entertainment companies, and global enterprises to run their performance-sensitive applications and to connect and do business. CoreSite announced last month that it was under contract to acquire the 283,215 square-foot facility and would develop a new data center campus at the location, expecting to offer up to 18 critical megawatts of capacity. The currently-vacant two-story industrial property has office and showroom space plus a six-story, 634-space parking garage.

"CoreSite's entry into Secaucus is an important step in the execution of our strategy to extend our U.S. platform supporting latency-sensitive customer applications in network-dense, cloud-enabled data center campuses," said Tom Ray, President and Chief Executive Officer, CoreSite. "Our New York campus is designed to meet performance-sensitive customer requirements supported by our location at the nexus of robust, protected, low-latency network rings serving Manhattan as well as global cable routes to Chicago, Frankfurt, London, and Brazil. Additionally, customers are able to directly connect to service nodes for Amazon Web Services Direct Connect."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

Digital Realty Pays $16.8M for Metro New York Redevelopment Property

Digital Realty Trust, a San Francisco-based provider of data center solutions, announced yesterday that it had acquired a 271,000 square foot redevelopment property in Totowa, New Jersey for approximately $16.8 million from an undisclosed seller. Records from PropertyShark.com indicate that 701 Union Boulevard, which once served as the printing center for Hoffman La-Roche, previously changed hands in 2004 for $1 million. Digital Realty said that they will be redeveloping the 271,000 square foot building on just over 34 acres of land, and bringing in 15.75MW of power and eventually a 50MVA onsite substation for later expansion. CBRE's Kevin Welsh and Tom Mallaney orchestrated the trade according to a GlobeSt.com article.

"With our current portfolio in the New York Metro market nearing capacity, this new site enables us to add inventory to meet future demand for highly reliable data center space in this key corporate enterprise market," said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty. "Its location also adds geographic diversity for customers looking to deploy mission critical business applications outside of Manhattan."

"Based on our conservative underwriting, we expect to generate attractive risk adjusted returns on this investment," added Scott Peterson, Chief Acquisitions Officer of Digital Realty. "With the redevelopment opportunity of the existing building coupled with the additional land available for new development, we believe this investment has considerable upside potential."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

Digital Realty Buys $123M Dallas Office Park

Digital Realty Trust purchased an 819,000 square foot operating data center and office campus in Lewisville, Texas, a Dallas suburb, for $123 million. According to a CoStar report, Brookfield Real Estate Opportunity Fund I sold Convergence Office Center, which is about 40 minutes north of Dallas. The campus covers over 168 acres, which includes ten buildings and 39 acres of land for future development. At the time of sale, the property was leased as data center space to three tenants, representing approximately 36% of total revenue for the property, with the balance of space leased as office and office/lab space with major tenants including

"This acquisition will immediately contribute stabilized cash flow to our portfolio from the existing long-term leases, while providing a wide range of future development and potential redevelopment opportunities," said Michael F. Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty. "Dallas continues to be a very strong market for us. When combined with Datacenter Park Dallas in Richardson, located approximately 25 miles from this site, we believe that we will be able to accommodate a large majority of the data center requirements from customers seeking space in the Dallas market."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

$1.2B NSA Data Center Breaks Ground in UT

The National Security Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground this month on a new $1.2 billion data center in Utah according to a Salt Lake Tribune article. The new facility at Camp W.G. Williams National Guard Post, project-managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will be constructed by a joint venture between Balfour Beatty, DPR, and Salt Lake City-based Big-D Construction. The one million square foot facility is the largest Department of Defense project in the nation.

"This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during the construction and development phase," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said at the groundbreaking event on January 7. "Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent, high-paid employees."

"We've been fortunate here in the state," said Jim Judd of the Utah AFL-CIO labor unions. "The NSA project will pick up the commercial construction business. It will provide long-term employment help for the state until, hopefully, the economy recovers."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.