i/o Data Centers is planning to build a huge data center in New Jersey to serve as the East Coast hub for its growing colocation business. The company is in the late stages of site selection for a modular data center that will occupy 550,000 square feet of space, which would make the center one of the largest in the country.
“We’re expanding to the East Coast,” said George Slessman, CEO of i/o Data Centers told Data Centers Knowledge. “We really think it’s critical for our customers to have both East coast and West coast options. We think it’s a natural progression.”
The company currently operates two data centers in the Phoenix market , including i/o Phoenix, which at 538,000 square feet is among the world’s largest data centers. Last month, the company acquired a $130-million line of credit facility to finance growth, including the New Jersey data center and additional deployments in Phase II of its Phoenix site.
Slessman said the company has narrowed its site search to two locations in New Jersey, including a greenfield site and a retrofit of an existing facility. Either site would be developed using the company’s i/o Anywhere modular data center as the deployment model.
The New Jersey market already has seen several new providers open facilities this year. Earlier this month, DuPont Fabros Technology opened a data center in Piscataway; Senitinel Data Centers is in Somerset; and NYSE Euronext recently opened a colocation center in Mahwah.
