CHICAGO—Officials from Ascent, a provider of data centers, and Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT say they have secured a lease from TransUnion, the first tenant to occupy the new colocation suite in their CH2 data center facility. As reported in GlobeSt.com, Ascent sold it's the suburban Northlake property to the REIT earlier this year for $211.7 million. As part of the deal, CVMC REIT would provide new capital for an expansion of the facility and Ascent would continue to operate it and manage all development, design, construction and engineering. Ascent collaborated with TransUnion, a global player in credit and information management services, to custom design the data center to suit its specific technical needs.

CH2 is a 250,000-square-foot multi-tenant facility that features Ascent's purpose-built Dynamic Data Center Suite model and a shared infrastructure colocation suite. The newly-constructed space offers low power usage, free cooling for approximately 45% of the year, hot aisle containment and an onsite transmission substation. TransUnion's space has 1.2 MW of power. The project – from design to build-out – was completed in seven months. Ascent delivered the suite to TransUnion in May 2014. Ascent and TransUnion will host a grand opening of the new suite in October.

“The new data center represents a significant investment in the transformation of TransUnion's technology and data center infrastructure and our growing commitment to efficient facilities,” said Josh Neyer, global head of data centers for TransUnion, in a prepared statement. Officials were not available for further comment, but GlobeSt.com will provide an update tomorrow. “With this new environmentally friendly data center, we can expand capacity and better serve our customers. The partnership with Ascent and numerous other suppliers allowed us to successfully deploy a uniquely efficient space on a fast-tracked timeline.”