Digital Tsunami to Flood US by 2022
Dallas will play a key role in the ramp-up phase as one of the fastest-growing cities in the US, thus requiring more data centers to cater to last-mile delivery closer to customers.
RICHARDSON, TX—In anticipation of a data flood in the next three years, one data center is getting ahead of the downpour. When completed in summer 2019, a 130,000-square-foot powered shell data center is to be located in Dallas County, just south of KDC’s CityLine development in the Telecom Corridor. The site is at 1510 E. Lookout Dr. near the intersection of Plano Road and Lookout Drive.
Alliance Architects is the designer and Kimley Horn is the civil engineer. Ridgemont is the general contractor, Telios Dallas is the mechanical and electrical engineer, and LA Fuess Partners is the structural engineer. KDC recently broke ground on the project.
“KDC is excited to be developing another data center in Richardson on such a well-located site that contains an abundance of fiber and power,” said Ab Atkins, senior vice president-partner, KDC. “We are very appreciative of the support from the city of Richardson, which is vital toward attracting high-quality data center users to our project.”
Features of the data center include 190 MPH wind-resistant design, on-site substation for power and short electrical feeder runs, more than 20 network fiber carriers, and a 10-year 50% city of Richardson business personal property tax abatement.
“When we entered the data center space almost 12 years ago, the talk was all about power and redundancy, as many data centers were being developed in remote areas because of inexpensive power,” Atkins tells GlobeSt.com. “Today, the conversation is centered on low latency and highly resilient networks within heavy commerce population centers for a last mile delivery that is closer to the customer. Emerging technology such as 5G and Edge computing will be additional drivers for this urban data center demand. In short, data centers are important and prevalent in all heavy population centers, and as Dallas is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing cities in the US, we require more and more data centers.”
As Atkins indicates, it appears likely that 5G will begin to generate noticeable business for data centers in late 2019. This is when service providers and hyperscale operators begin to deploy next-generation networking equipment to prepare for the onset of 5G services beginning in 2020, “with the trickle of data growing into a digital tsunami by 2022”, according to Data Center Frontier.
After entering the data center market in 2007, Dallas-based KDC completed 15 ground-up greenfield data center developments for enterprise and wholesale colocation customers in the Texas, Virginia and Kansas data center markets. Within the last 30 years, KDC has produced approximately 33 million square feet valued at more than $9 billion.
KDC develops walkable mixed-use urban environments, and specializes in data center and broadcast studio build-to-suits. KDC’s portfolio includes developments for FedEx, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Raytheon, State Farm (Dallas and Atlanta offices) and Toyota North America.