Carter Validius Pays $95M for Atlanta Data Center, Digital Realty $63M

By Georgiana Mihaila, Associate Editor

An increased interest in Atlanta’s data center facilities marks a great new year start for the local commercial market. Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, Inc. has just announced its $94.75 million acquisition of Peachtree Data Center, completed through a joint venture with three institutional investors whose names have not been disclosed.

The wholesale multi-tenant data center, originally constructed in 1927, has undergone several renovations throughout the years, with the most recent completed in 2010—renovation that called for an investment of $30 million from the previous owner and a total of $200 million from the current tenants. The six-story building sits on nearly 3.1 acres and has approximately 338,000 square feet of rentable space. The data center is fed by a Georgia Power system with five switches that each have the capacity to support 20 megawatts of committed power, while also being equipped with 14 generators that provide backup power; the property also boasts over 7,000 tons of chiller plant cooling equipment that help maintain optimum temperatures for the equipment in the various data centers.

Two parking garages that service the facility are also included in the acquisition. According to an official release, the property is currently 100 percent leased to six different tenants—three of which are Fortune 500 companies—with an average remaining lease term of over 11 years.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. has also added a new Atlanta data center to its portfolio along with the purchase of the 344,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The three-story data center commanded a price of approximately $63 million; the acquisition was structured as a sale leaseback transaction with the previous owner, a major US based airline, which will continue to occupy approximately 167,000 square feet under a new ten-year lease agreement with Digital Realty. The balance of the data center facility is leased on a long term basis to a leading provider of critical transaction processing solutions to companies operating in the global travel industry.