New Chicago Facility - Data Center Construction Blog

Well, we've finally gotten the deal finished for our new Chicago facility.  We have been in the works on this for over a year now, scoping out sites, going into negotiations on several sites, and have finally signed a deal.  Our new data center and offices will be located at 725 S. Wells St., in downtown Chicago.  The initital build-out will be roughly 6,000 sq. ft. of raised floor data center space and 2,500 sq. ft. of office (including space that can be rented to customers or used for DR) and storage space with continued options for additional space in the building, up to 60,000 sq.  We have also reached agreements with RCN and Abovenet for fiber back to 350 E Cermak and will still be offering cross connects to the 350 E Cermak Meet-Me Room (TelX) and to Equinix.  725 S Wells will also have about a dozen carriers on-site, including Abovenet, RCN, Level3, AT&T, Verizon, Cogent, etc. once things are live.  The construction will be handled by MDI, who has handled many similar projects for various financial institutions and telecommunications providers.

Right now, the schedule is to begin moving in limited equipment starting January 1, 2010 and have a grand opening with space available to customers, etc. starting February 1.  We are planning to move our corporate offices, including our billing address, to 725 S Wells effective January 1.  We will not be forcing any colocation customers to move out of 350 E Cermak, but we may do some scheduled dedicated server migrations.  350 E Cermak will continue to have 24/7 on-site staff.

Now that I have covered most of the basics, feel free to email sales@steadfast.net with any further questions.  We should have pricing for the new site finalized before the end of October and will start accepting pre-orders at that time.

This also means that we will be doing regular blog updates, likely once a week, as to the status of our data center construction, including pictures.  This will give you a detailed look at the inner workings of our facility and hopefully you'll learn some things along the way as well.  Here are a couple (bad) pictures taken with my cell phone to show the initial state of the site.  Full time construction should be getting started next week, so I'll likely have another update in 2 weeks or so.

The initial space is on the 8th floor, our office space will be at the front of the floor (west side), looking towards the Chicago River and this is the view, though hopefully most days are nicer than it was today.  It is still a significantly improved view over what we have in our current office, which has no exterior windows at all.

Behind the initial office space in the front is wide open space, which will be the raised floor data center space.  The space has good ceiling heights, ~12', and solid concrete floors with 150 lb. per sq. ft. floor loads.  This space should be completely changed over the coming months and yes, the windows in the back will be walled off.

Here is a look at the current front door for the floor.  This will be changed completely, with a man trap, ramp up to the raised flooring, etc.  I'm not even really sure why I took a picture of it.

Again, feel free to email sales@steadfast.net with any further questions.  We should have pricing for the new site finalized before the end of October and will start accepting pre-orders at that time.