DENVER—With the goal of developing large-scale campuses across North America, EdgeCore Internet Real Estate LLC has thrown its hat into the data center ring. Led by industry veteran Tom Ray and with key backing by GIC Pte. Ltd., the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, EdgeCore initially will be capitalized with more than $800 million of equity to support about $2 billion of data center development and investment.
The new vehicle is a partnership of Mount Elbert Capital Partners, Canadian pension fund manager OPTrust and GIC. Its initial roll-out will include campus development across six markets, starting with construction on a 225-megawatt facility in Mesa, AZ that is scheduled to begin this quarter and be substantially complete by the fourth quarter.
Following that will be campuses in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Reno markets, for which EdgeCore plans to close on parcel acquisitions by the end of Q1. Located in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, TX, EdgeCore's Dallas Data Center Campus is planned to eventually accommodate five buildings supporting a combined 165 MW of critical load. The EdgeCore Reno Campus will provide up to 1.1 million square feet and 225 MW of data center capacity. Additionally, EdgeCore intends to pursue acquiring land in three complementary Tier I markets in Q2, with a view toward commencing construction on each campus within the year.
“As a long-term value investor, we believe the secular growth in data consumption and public cloud usage will generate attractive returns in the data center sector,” says Lee Kok Sun, CIO of GIC. Ray, who is chairman and CEO of EdgeCore as well as Mt. Elbert, says that GIC and OPTrust share his vision of “creating a scalable North American data center platform.”
Ray's experience in the data center space extends back to the early 2000s, when as a managing director with the Carlyle Group he launched CRG West, a colocation business which later became the publicly traded CoreSite. He retired as CoreSite's CEO in 2016.
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
