Connectivity-Rich Data Center Changes Hands in New Jersey

By Robert Demeter

QTS Piscataway

New York–QTS Realty Trust (QTS), an international provider of data center, managed hosting and cloud services, recently acquired a 360,000-square-foot data center for $125 million in Piscataway, NJ. QTS procured the 18 megawatt facility from DuPont Fabros Technology Inc. with plans to add an additional 8 megawatts over the next few years.

The LEED Gold certified data center sits on a 38-acre campus at 101 Possumtown Road, in close proximity to New York City’s global financial and business districts. The facility has built-out capacity representing 18 critical megawatts, and 88,000 square feet of raised floor data center space. QTS plans to strategically redevelop portions of the facility to expand its total raised floor capacity to 176,000 square feet and over 26 megawatts of critical power.

The connectivity-rich facility is carrier neutral with 18 carriers, and serves as a point of presence for the Amsterdam Internet Exchange. QTS will develop the facility to support a wide range of power redundancy from N to 2N. The campus has solar panels that produce 2 megawatts of power, which aligns with QTS’ sustainability approach. The property also features an onsite 112kVA substation.

The facility’s current customers consist of a major pharmaceutical company, a large media company and several financial services organizations. Ongoing customers occupy approximately 56,000 square feet and 8.4 megawatts of the total available critical power, leaving room for both new customers and an immediate expansion of services. The data center will provide much needed capacity for QTS’ current and potential customers seeking secure and compliant colocation in the Northeast region, and aligns with its growth strategy.

QTS Piscataway

While the acquired data center was previously marketed exclusively to wholesale customers, QTS plans to utilize its fully integrated technology services 3C platform of custom data centers, colocation and cloud and managed services. The 3C platform, combined with the company’s leading security and compliance capabilities, allows QTS to intersect customers in this high demand market. QTS is confident that, with its cost advantage low-basis acquisition, it can drive incremental utilization and efficiencies, and support QTS’ target 15+ percent unlevered return on invested capital upon full stabilization.

The property is fully monitored by CCTV cameras, and 24x7x365 manned security. It features a single point of entry with card key access control and dual authentication with biometric readers.

The recently purchased facility became QTS’ third New Jersey data center, and continues to strengthen its ability to serve Fortune 1000 enterprises, and companies in financial services, healthcare and technology in the Northeast.

Photos courtesy of QTS