Developer readies second Northlake data center
By Mark Lawton mlawton@pioneerlocal.com June 30, 2011 7:04PM
Ascent's second data center is close to completion at 505 Railroad Ave. in Northlake. | Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: October 30, 2011 12:53AM
Northlake’s second data center is close to being completed with one tenant inside and another coming soon.
“We have delivered one of those spaces and are working on the next,” said Phil Horstmann, owner of Ascent, a St. Louis-based developer of data centers.
Horstmann declined to name the tenants but said the facility will cater to Fortune 1000 companies.
The company has installed a new roof on the former Freudenberg property, 505 Railroad Ave. Ascent has also improved the insulation, added shipping and receiving docks and is in the process of building a 54-megawatt electrical substation, which should be complete this summer.
Each tenant will have its own suite built out as needed, which is where most of the “big heavy work” takes place, Horstmann said.
Horstmann estimates the center eventually will hold four to six tenants. That’s a change from the developer’s first data center at 601 Northwest Ave., which was leased solely by Microsoft.
The construction project costs about $250 million, not including the purchase of computers or information technology equipment.
The second data center is a speculative project, meaning Ascent purchased the land and made improvements before signing up tenants. Hosrstmann said it took about a year longer than he originally anticipated to find investors with capital.
“The economy is bad and debt markets dried up, but we were able to assemble an equity team (investors) that allowed us to get the project started,” Horstmann said.
The Chicago area is “under served” for data centers, Horstmann said. Ascent’s business model, where the developer takes the risk in developing the data center and the tenants pay over the life of the data center is “appealing, especially in these economic times,” he said.
The company chose Northlake for several reasons.
“The Northlake area is kind of tailor made for a data center,” Horstmann said. “It’s an industrial area with lots of fiber optic (cable) connectivity and lots of (electrical) power,” Horstmann said.
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