Data Center Operator Picks KC for New $32M Facility

January 30, 2012
By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

CoSentry, an Omaha-based provider of data center, cloud computing, co-location and managed-Internet services, has purchased a 57,500-square-foot former light industrial building in Lenexa, Kan., for use as a data center, the company announced late last week. Construction on the $31.6 million rehab project, at 14500 W. 105th St. in Lenexa, is expected to begin next month.

After a two-year evaluation process, CoSentry chose the Kansas City region out of 21 markets, based in part on competitive energy prices, said Doug West, vice president and general manager for CoSentry’s south region. Colliers International led the real estate search.

A CoSentry spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive that the new facility will likely be a Tier 3 data center. Such centers typically have redundant power for all IT equipment and guarantee more than 99.98 percent availability.

The Kansas City Area Development Council, Kansas Department of Commerce, and Lenexa Chamber and Economic Development Council worked together to bring CoSentry to the KC region. The data center reportedly will create more than 60 jobs.

The two-state Kansas City region reportedly ranks among the nation’s top three for IT workforce availability and is a focal point for both long-haul fiber and transcontinental fiber networks.

Earlier this month, CPE reported on Digital Realty Trust’s purchase of major data centers in San Francisco and Atlanta, for $85 million and $63 million, respectively.

And in late December, we reported that Hines Global REIT had acquired, for $160 million, Fisher Plaza, a two-building complex in Seattle that includes a multi-tenant data center in addition to office, retail, broadcast and telecommunications space. As of the purchase, Hines already owned the 661,500-square-foot One Wilshire Building in Los Angeles, which houses more than 300 telecommunications and data carriers.

The past year saw a surge of interest in data centers. “There is an insatiable amount of demand happening around the globe,” Bo Bond, co-lead of Jones Lang LaSalle’s data-center solutions team, told CPE last month. “As speculative development commences, we will begin to see a new crop of winners and losers in the data-center arena.”