RKAI Completes High-Rise Downtown Data Center
Date Posted: May 26, 2014
Posted In: Projects,
Architect RKAI recently completed a high-rise data center project in Downtown St. Louis for Digital Realty. Digital Realty is an international, publicly-held firm which builds, leases, and maintains offsite data hosting.
Over the last three years RKAI’s Geoff Crowley worked closely with Digital Realty, Clune Construction, and an array of consultants to develop designs, strategies, and directions to renovate 210 North Tucker Boulevard from an 18 story shell of a former GSA (non-code compliant) building to St. Louis’s top tier data center.
RKAI redesigned the site, lobby, core, tenant suites, data suites, and rooftop. They met with the local code officials on a regular basis to ensure the new design, for the conversion of the building from office to data center, was smooth and maintained Digital Realty’s schedules for timely delivery of spaces.
The project required major coordination across multiple disciplines around the country including two MEP firms, two structural firms, civil engineering, abatement, geotechnical, and Security. The coordination allowed the project to be delivered in three major packages and multiple smaller packages. The 337,416 square foot facility now offers over 200,000 square feet of rentable data center/colocation space. RKAI incorporated all the current Digital Realty design guidelines into the facility.
A new lobby design was implemented including a security center, a new loading dock area along with a freight elevator was designed to allow complete access for the building. The designs included a gut renovation of the building cores along with new toilet rooms and a new fitness center. The building was laid out to provide all tenants with access to two “meet me” rooms for ease of interconnectivity.
The building is serviced by two concurrently maintainable power grids providing 18MW of power with N+1 generator and UPS Back-up available for all critical functions.
The roof was redesigned to provide three, 1,500 ton condenser water towers; five, 400 ton air-cooled chillers; along with providing the building with a double interlock pre-action sprinkler system and N+1 mechanical configuration.
There are multiple fiber providers offering a broad array of connectivity including connection to the sister facility at 900 Walnut. Click Here to be linked to a video of building.
Digital Realty Trust, Inc. focuses on delivering customer-driven data center solutions by providing secure, reliable and cost-effective facilities that meet each customer’s unique data center needs. Digital Realty’s customers include domestic and international companies across multiple industry verticals ranging from financial services, cloud and information technology services, to manufacturing, energy, health care and consumer products. Digital Realty’s 131 properties, including 13 properties held as investments in unconsolidated joint ventures, comprise approximately 24.5 million square feet as of March 31, 2014, including 1.3 million square feet of space under active development and 1.4 million square feet of space held for future development. Digital Realty’s portfolio is located in 33 markets throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.