City officials, business leaders and the public got their first glimpse of Phoenix ONE Data Center, a gargantuan high-tech industrial building that will store businesses’ critical computer servers, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday night.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said during a facility tour that i/o Data Centers’ investment in the 538,000-square-foot building could help boost the area’s technology base.

The company’s investment also resurrects the high-profile building near Loop 202 and Arizona 143 in east Phoenix, which was left vacant in late 2006 after Pennsylvania-based Le-Nature’s Inc. water- and juice-bottling company went bankrupt.

The center provides “co-location services” that allow multiple organizations to rent space in the same facility to store data servers that support their technology needs.

Those services have grown more popular in recent years because they are more cost-effective than for companies to build and manage their own data centers

Arizona has become a hotbed for those operations because of its infrequent natural disasters. That ensures optimum uptime for infrastructure that supports everything from Web sites to billing.

Anthony Wanger, president and co-founder of i/o Data Centers, said the facility will hold the “crown jewels” of companies that decide to lease space there.

In January, i/o Data Centers signed a long-term lease for the property and moved its corporate headquarters there from a smaller data center in north Scottsdale that it continues to operate. The company has nearly doubled in size to 45 employees since leasing the building.

As many as 200 contractors spent the last several months retrofitting the space. It now contains 180,000 square feet of available space, about a quarter of which is either occupied or spoken for.

There is room to expand to an additional 180,000 square feet.

Wanger declined to name specific clients, citing confidentiality agreements those clients have with i/o Data Centers.

The building also contains 80,000 square feet of office space, which clients can rent to house employees of companies that are leasing space.

by Andrew Johnson – Jun. 27, 2009
The Arizona Republic