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Computer rendering of Ascent's future CH2 data center
Ascent Corp., the company that sold Microsoft its Chicago data center (famous for being the software company’s first to be based entirely on shipping containers stuffed with IT gear) has secured a large piece of land and funding to build another facility in the Chicago area.
Ascent plans to provide turnkey wholesale data center space at the future site, with options ranging from 1.5-25 MW suites to space and support for containerized data centers. The carrier-neutral facility, located in Cook County, will have its own dedicated substation, providing a dual 54 MW power feed.
“It’s … close to a little data center condo, if you will, offered on a turn-key wholesale colo rental model,” Ascent CEO Phil Horstmann said about the offering, called Dynamic Data Center Suites. “We have about eight different prototype reference designs.”
The existing designs are for suites ranging in capacity from 1.5 MW to 9 MW. Ascent has began actively marketing the data center, putting emphasis on design flexibility. If a tenant asks for a 1.5 MW suite, they will build it, but if another tenant – like with the first Chicago facility – asks to have the entire building to themselves, that option is on the table. No customer had been secured as of Friday afternoon.
The provider raised more than $100m several weeks prior to closing the land acquisition.
Ascent closed on the 20 acre property about one month ago and has commenced work, which includes partial demolition of a 250,000 sq ft industrial building on the site. Abstaining from disclosing price of the land, Horstmann said the company expected total investment to be more than $250m at full build-out.
Depending on design, Horstmann estimated Ascent’s construction costs to be between 5m and 13m per MW. He expects power to cost less than $0.5 per kW.
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Keywords: Microsoft, Ascent, wholesale colocation, data center, Chicago data center | |
