The Alliance complex has been chosen to anchor Teraspace's IT inroad because of its abundance of power and readily available land. Half of each building will house large servers while 30% has been dedicated for office space and the balance for support services.

"Clearly, it will be a magnet for additional users," Trout says of the undertaking. He says negotiations are under way from "San Jose to Washington, D.C." to lure high-tech companies to the Teraspace projects.

Trout says it's more cost efficient to build carrier hotels "from the ground up" plus the approach plays off companies' desires to maintain corporate identities. The center's size makes it feasible for a tenant to rent all or a significant portion of the building, unlike the rehabbed high-rises in downtown CBDs. The Alliance buildings will have the clear height, floor plan layouts and structural capacity that aren't necessarily in rehabbed structures without costly investments.

Teraspace will establish several strategic locations in a market so data center tenants will be able to accelerate market penetration schedules. The Dallas-Fort Worth data center facilities will be interconnected via a fiber optic metropolitan-area network, just like those found in CBDs.

Teraspace's Alliance center takes the 9,600 development "to the next level" by offering more top-of-the-line carrier choice, high-speed connections and redundant service, says Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties. Alliance's carrier roster already includes AT&T, Broadwing, Cable & Wireless, Enron, Genuity, Level 3, Nextlink, One Source/Millenium, Qwest, Savvis, Southwestern Bell, Sprint and Worldcom.