CHICAGO—The CNA Group LLC has just sold its 70,000-square-foot data center and office building at Meridian Business Park in west suburban Aurora to ByteGrid Holdings LLC for $30.35 million. The facility is the commercial insurance writer's primary data center in the US and it will continue occupying a portion of the facility in a sale leaseback transaction.
CNA had hired commercial real estate services firm Studley to negotiate the transaction, and was represented by the team of Greg Gerber, Kevin McLennan and Scott Merz.
After exploring several options, CNA decided to consolidate its footprint on the raised floor data center portion of building. BYTEGRID, which specializes in the ownership and development of data centers, will offer the remaining space to other tenants. The company also operates centers in Georgia, Maryland and Cleveland.
BYTEGRID officials say they plan to increase power in the building and improve its infrastructure due to market demand. Yesterday, GlobeSt.com reported that the Chicago metro area was poised for a data center boom.
"CNA concluded that by selling their building and leasing back a more efficient footprint, it could monetize its asset, increase flexibility and reduce annual expenses while maintaining or increasing the high level reliability that it requires for their mission critical data," says Gerber.
"Our partnership with BYTEGRID allows us to lower our future IT operating costs and to leverage alternative facilities while taking advantage of BYTEGRID's proven data center operations experience and all the benefits a multi-tenant data center has to offer," says Thomas Pontarelli, CNA's executive vice president and chief administration officer.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
