EdgeCore Internet Real Estate entered the data center market this year with plans to develop and operate centers across the U.S. and provide services to large cloud users like Microsoft, Amazon and Google and other Fortune 1000 companies in the Internet and applications space.
The company is backed by the global investment arm of the government of Singapore and will invest $2 billion in the North American data center market, according to a report in Data Center Knowledge.
Its initial development plans include data centers in Mesa, Dallas and Reno, Nevada.
EdgeCore sought a site in the Valley in order to gain access to a large population of users in the Phoenix metropolitan area – the 12th largest MSA in the country.
“It’s no secret that (the Valley) is a pretty attractive market for data center development,” said Matt Muell, EdgeCore senior vice president.
EdgeCore’s Mesa campus will be within the Eastmark development just west of Apple’s global operations center at Elliot and Signal Butte Roads. A new road called Everton Terrace will be constructed south of Elliot Road to lead to the site, Muell said.
In May 2017, Mesa’s Planning and Zoning Board approved a new development unit plan for multiple parcels in the northern part of Eastmark that slated some of the land to be used to create an employment corridor.
The employment uses stipulated in the plan included large and medium-size manufacturing, data centers and offices, according to city documents.
The deal to bring EdgeCore to Mesa came together relatively quickly as the new company first approached Eastmark executives about potentially purchasing land last spring, said Dea McDonald, Eastmark general manager.
“EdgeCore came to us and, at the time, we didn’t know who they were,” McDonald said. “But they had done enough research to know that the Elliot Road Technology Corridor was a place they would like to be, if for no other reason than Apple had put their global operations center there.”
The official groundbreaking for the first phase of the project will take place on March 7.
EdgeCore expects the first phase of the data center campus to go live by the end of the year. It will feature a 200,000-square-foot building that will support 24 to 32 megawatts of critical load.
At buildout, the Mesa campus will feature seven data center buildings with a total of 1.25 million square feet of space and will support 225 megawatts of critical load.
Mesa, and the Elliot Road Tech Corridor in particular, was an attractive site for a variety of reasons, including ready access to the significant power, water and fiber infrastructure a large data center requires.
The corridor is near SRP’s Browning receiving station and 500kV, 230kV and 69kV transmission lines.
It also has access to SRP’s extensive unused dark fiber network. Businesses can pay SRP to tie in to that network, which connects with major carrier network access points and throughout the Valley, according to SRP.
“(The available) infrastructure and political support were all highly influential (in our decision),” Muell said.
EdgeCore was also attracted to the Valley, because of the region’s affordability relative to other population centers in the Southwest, Muell said.
Specifically, Muell pointed to power costs in the Phoenix area, which are 50 percent lower than Los Angeles.
“Power costs are a big part of total cost when operating data center,” he said.
Those power savings coupled with state tax incentives encouraging data center development made the current site “more cost effective versus other places without incentives,” he added.
The project is a major win for Eastmark, which has made a concerted effort to bring employment opportunities to the community, McDonald said.
Eastmark is targeting campus-style office, data center and light manufacturing users, including employers that require large parcels of land.
McDonald said that business-attraction efforts typically start at the state level, with the Arizona Commerce Authority and Greater Phoenix Economic Council reaching out to municipalities that may be a fit for businesses looking to expand to Arizona.
Eastmark representatives meet regularly with City of Mesa Economic Development officials to discuss opportunities that may be a fit for the community.
“Eastmark is the perfect location for high water users, high power users and large data users,” McDonald said.
©2018 East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Ariz.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
