Tech Corridor Continues to Thrive with Multi-Tenant Facility

907 Security Row, a planned multi-tenant facility, will have 70,000 square feet of raised floor space.

RICHARDSON, TX—The strong technology business presence began in the north Dallas suburb of Richardson in the 1950s. In 1956, Texas Instruments selected the east side of US 75 just north of Interstate 635 for its corporate campus. In 1957, Collins Radio , a well-established electronics company from Cedar Rapids, IA built the first building of what would become a multi-building campus on a 400-acre site north of Texas Instruments near US 75 and Arapaho Road. Both companies attracted a wealth of engineering talent and eventually spawned a number of technology-based enterprises. The pace accelerated even further in the 1980s with the deregulation of the telecommunications industry. MCI was the first, with a microwave network that relied on the products and technical expertise of Collins Radio (acquired by Rockwell in 1971, which in turn was acquired by Alcatel in 1991). At that time, Nortel, Fujitsu and Ericsson created major operations in Richardson to benefit from the technical expertise and attractive cost of living here. Today, the Dallas/Fort Worth region is one of the largest technology centers in the United States. A variety of high-tech companies employ hundreds of thousands of people in the region. Telecom, IT biomedical, semiconductor and nanotechnology are all represented in the area that has come to be known as the Telecom/Technology Corridor. Digital Realty ‘s Dallas Data Center Campus is on the site of the Collins Radio facility. Architectural design services have recently been completed within the campus for 907 Security Row, a planned multi-tenant facility with 70,000 square feet of raised floor space and 33,000 square feet of exterior equipment yard. Design features include a dedicated on-site substation delivering dual fed underground power with fully redundant 2N electrical systems, secondary power with 2 megawatt generators configured as N+1 and air-cooled units with indirect refrigerant economization. The facility provides access to more than 100 provider networks, in addition to dual authentication access with biometric and card key access control. Digital Realty provides the combination of a data center ecosystem business with a colocation services provider in an interconnected global network. Data center campuses across the globe tether to major Cloud + Internet exchange points to provide carrier-dense connectivity. This marks the sixth project Alliance Architects has designed in the Richardson campus. Alliance Architects ‘ team members included Chad D. Michel , principal, and Tegene Mariam .  DPR Construction provided general construction and construction management services. Michel tells GlobeSt.com: “It has been a pleasure working with Digital Realty’s design, construction and management teams on the Digital Dallas campus over the last five years. Seeing and being a part of the transformation and reuse of the old 69-acre Collins Radio campus into a thriving datacenter campus has been very rewarding.”