DuPont Fabros Technology, Inc., a leading owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large multi-tenant wholesale data centers, announced it has formally opened its newest data center in the greater Chicago area. CH2 is located on more than 15 acres of land just west of downtown Chicago in Elk Grove Village. DFT previously announced that it executed its first pre-lease on the new CH2 facility, making Phase I 20 percent leased.
CH2 Phase I includes 7.1 megawatts of critical load capacity and five computer rooms totaling nearly 45,000 square feet of white space. When fully developed, CH2 will include approximately 336,000 square feet and a critical load capacity totaling 25.6 megawatts. Constructed following the same award-winning design principles of DFT's Ashburn, VA-based ACC7 facility that opened in September 2014, CH2 offers a high degree of flexibility, provides customers with a variety of space offerings, cabinet layouts and power densities across 18 computer rooms, and features a chiller assist cooling system and an Isolated-Parallel UPS topology. Each base computer room is approximately 9,000 gross square feet, delivers flexible power from 1.0 to 2.0 megawatts of critical load capacity and has a floor to ceiling height of 13 feet. CH2 is concurrently maintainable and has a design Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 (annualized).
CH2 sits across the street from CH1. Customers located in CH2 have access to the 14 network carriers at CH1 using DFT's underground conduit system connecting the two data centers. In addition, DFT executed a definitive agreement with AMS-IX USA to build and operate an Internet Exchange in CH2, which will be accessible by customers located in CH2 and in CH1.
"There are many reasons for us to expand our presence in Chicago, including customer demand, Cook County's competitive power rates, enhanced accessibility to O'Hare International Airport and Chicago's reputation as one of the country's leading telecommunications infrastructure cities" said Chris Eldredge, president and CEO of DFT. "We believe the combination of these factors, along with our relentless focus on performance and unequaled reliability, played a direct role in the execution of our first lease in this facility. It sets the stage for a successful future."
About DuPont Fabros Technology, Inc.
DuPont Fabros Technology, Inc. is a leading owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, large multi-tenant wholesale data centers. The Company's facilities are designed to offer highly specialized, efficient and safe computing environments in a low-cost operating model. The Company's customers outsource their mission-critical applications and include national and international enterprises across numerous industries, such as technology, Internet content providers, media, communications, cloud-based, healthcare and financial services. The Company's 12 data centers are located in four major U.S. markets, which total 2.9 million gross square feet and 256 megawatts of available critical load to power the servers and computing equipment of its customers. DuPont Fabros Technology is a real estate investment trust (REIT) headquartered in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.dft.com.