CoreSite Realty Corporation announced the opening of Phase 1 of its new ground-up data center development in Chicago. The 169,000-square-foot facility, known as “CH2,” will provide a total of 18 megawatts of capacity from the site in downtown Chicago.
The CH2 data center is one of the first purpose-built, ground-up development in downtown Chicago, and CoreSite has completed Phase 1, representing 56,000 square feet and six megawatts of capacity.
“We designed CH2 to offer a new choice in downtown Chicago for high density, easy interconnection access and sustainably focused operations, in a highly interconnected campus to appeal to those customers who require high performance and low latency at the edge,” said Brian Warren, CoreSite’s senior vice president of development and product engineering. “We believe this new facility will meet our customers’ requirements, providing core retail colocation and scale solutions for high-density applications with the extensive connectivity options of a multi-cloud and carrier ecosystem.”
CH2’s efficient design incorporates optimized connectivity access, with three separate fiber entry routes into the new data center, as well as a connection to CoreSite’s CH1 data center, one of the top interconnected Chicago data centers. Designed for high resiliency, all systems are concurrently maintainable with diverse power delivery paths to the customer during maintenance activities.
“Our CH2 Data Center delivers a large and efficient data center design that enables enterprises to solve for mission critical, performance-sensitive hybrid cloud applications, by providing a choice of new purpose-built space versus other market retrofit options,” said Matt Gleason, CoreSite’s vice president and general manager of the Chicago market. “The addition of CH2 increases our robust ecosystem to serve customers with one of the most interconnected data center campuses in downtown Chicago.”
The data center will take advantage of tax incentives via the Illinois Dept. of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The Illinois Data Center Investment Act requires CoreSite to create 20 new full-time equivalent jobs and make a capital investment, together with its customers qualifying investments, of at least $250 million in a 60-month period at its CH2 location. The company must also obtain and maintain the requisite building certification, including, but not limited to, ENERGY STAR, a qualifying environmental-friendly program approved by the Investment Program.
