Two More Telecom Facilities Planned for Northwest Portland

PORTLAND-Two national companies have come to Portland to open 260,000 sf of Downtown telecom hotel space. Williams Communications, a major fiber-optic player based in Tulsa, OK plans to build a 100,000 sf telecom facility at Northwest 20th Avenue and Pettygrove Street in Portland. Centennial Real Estate Corp., a Dallas-based real estate investment company, is partnering with a New York investment group on the rehab and conversion of a 160,000-sf warehouse they purchased on Northwest Everett Street from the Oregon Historical Society.

Telecom hotels are essentially logistical storage and routing facilities for companies providing cable, Internet, voice and data network services to corporate and residential clients. There are three major rings of fiber running under the streets of metropolitan Portland, one of which runs through close-in Northwest Portland. It costs roughly $350,000 per mile to run fiber from these rings to buildings, so telecom hotels are often developed close to these rings.

“There’s a real frenzy in the telecom hotel sector nationwide and Portland is right in the middle of it,” says Cushman & Wakefield broker Ramona Harrington, current president of the Portland Chapter of the Commercial Association of Realtors. “Part of the frenzy has to do with who can get to the market first and gain critical mass.”