Iron Mountain Lands Customer for Frankfurt Data Center

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Iron Mountain Inc., of Boston, has secured a customer for its FRA-1 data center project in Frankfurt. A Fortune 100 company preleased the entire 280,000-square-foot facility well in advance of its completion.

READ ALSO: KKR Lines Up $1B for European Data Center Platform

FRA-1 is taking shape roughly 5 miles from downtown Frankfurt at Borsigallee 1, a site Iron Mountain acquired for $50 million in 2019. The 27-megawatt turn-key facility will be built from the ground up in three phases offering 9 megawatts each. Phase one of the four-story, hyperscale data center is scheduled to reach completion in the second quarter of 2021, at which point the new tenant’s lease will commence. The Fortune 100 company inked a 10-year agreement with Iron Mountain, including options for renewal.

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With a commitment in place at FRA-1, Iron Mountain plans to bring in a joint venture partner on the property. “It’s not absolutely critical that we do that, but we would like to do that because it just allows us to stretch our balance sheet or expand faster into other areas,” William Meaney, president & CEO of Iron Mountain Inc., said during the storage and information management services company’s third quarter 2019 earnings conference call on October 31, 2019. As of Iron Mountain’s fourth quarter call on February 13, 2020, the company had progressed quite far in the process with a couple of potential investors.

Eyes on Frankfurt

Frankfurt is one of the leading data center markets in the world, and Iron Mountain is among a bevy of U.S. investors that are eager to accommodate growing demand in the area through the establishment of new investment endeavors this year. In February, Vantage Data Centers announced its expansion into Europe with the acquisition of Etix Everywhere and its 55-megawatt data center campus in Frankfurt. And in May, KKR announced it had partnered with data center entrepreneur Franek Sodzawiczny on the creation of Global Technical Realty, a $2.5 billion build-to-suit and roll-up acquisition data center platform with an eye on European markets, including such Tier 1 locations as Frankfurt. Iron Mountain expects to complete the final phase of its FRA-1 data center in the second quarter of 2022.