Vantage Data Centers plans a major expansion of its campus in Santa Clara, Calif. the company announced today. Vantage intends to build two new data centers, adding 21 megawatts of IT capacity for tenants.
The new projects represent a major expansion for Vantage, and will bring significant new capacity online in Santa Clara, the leading data center hub in the busy Silicon Valley market.
The two new data centers, named V5 and V6, will be completed in phases beginning the second half of 2017.
V5 will be built on Vantage’s existing Santa Clara campus off Walsh Avenue, while Vantage has recently acquired adjacent land where it plans to build its V6 data center.
“Today’s 21MW expansion announcement underscores Vantage’s continued commitment to scaling its data centers to accommodate customer growth,” said Sureel Choksi, President and CEO, Vantage Data Centers. “V5 and V6 will be built to the Vantage data center standard, focusing on flexible design to meet customers’ varied needs including supporting both traditional and high density data center designs.”
Strong Leasing Trend in Silicon Valley
There’s been hot demand for data center space in Santa Clara during the first quarter of 2016, with CoreSite signing a tenant for an entire phase of its new building in Santa Clara, while DuPont Fabros leasing a whopping 16 megawatts to a single customer. That builds on strong successes in 2015, including boffo leasing for Vantage, which signed four leases of 2MW or more during the year.
That prompted Vantage to commence construction on its V4 data center, which is expected to come online later this year. In February the company secured $295 million in additional debt financing, bringing its bank facility to $570 million. Vantage initially sought to expand its borrowing capacity by $200 million, but increased the offering when it received strong interest from lenders.
“To close on this oversubscribed, upsized financing with the strong support from our lenders, especially in light of difficult capital markets conditions, is a reflection of Vantage’s strong financial performance and growth prospects,” said Dave Renner, the Chief Financial Officer of Vantage.
As a result, the V5 and V6 projects are already fully funded, Vantage said.
Vantage Data Centers was founded in 2010 with backing from private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. The company acquired and redeveloped an Intel data center campus in Santa Clara, which has become the data center capital of Silicon Valley due to its affordable power. The company also operates a data center campus in Quincy, Washington.