CHICAGO—EnTrust Realty Advisors, LLC, a subsidiary of The Alter Group, got investors from around the nation interested in their data center at 1800 Springer Dr., in Lombard, before selling the property to CyrusOne, which already occupied almost the entire building. CyrusOne had converted the facility into a data center in 2010 and secured the right of first refusal to purchase the building.

The property is located in the Oak Creek Center business park, an 11-building, 70-acre office complex containing 427,000-square-feet of office space originally developed by The Alter Group in the early 1980's. CyrusOne provides data services that protect the operation of IT infrastructure for more than 500 customers, including nine of the global Fortune 20 and more than 100 of the Fortune 1000 companies.

“It's really a major commitment to convert a property into a data center,” says James Clark, EnTrust's managing principal. The power systems typically need an upgrade, along with new cooling systems, back-up generators and other changes. “The challenging part is that it then becomes a special purpose asset. That narrows the universe of possible investors, but given the push toward cloud computing,” there is still a healthy demand.