DealWatch: Lincoln Rackhouse, 365 Data Centers, StratCap, GI Partners

Welcome to DealWatch, a new feature at Data Center Frontier providing news on the latest transactions in the data center sector, including deals for facilities, data center portfolios facility, and acquisitions of companies. We have some of each in this installment, featuring deals announced in the last two weeks:

• Lincoln Rackhouse and Principal Real Estate Investors Acquire Atlanta Data Center: The companies have partnered to data center located in the heart of Atlanta’s high-tech corridor. The 185,000 square-foot facility sits on a 38-acre parcel with more than 7MW of capacity, and a design to expand to over 13MW. Furthermore, the site can support a separate 30MW ground up data center development. “We’re proud to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors in a market that’s quickly become one of the most robust data center regions in the U.S.,” stated Martin Peck, Executive Vice President, Lincoln Rackhouse. “Our plan is to begin immediate development of additional turn-key critical floor space, that will ultimately align and address our customer’s current and future expansion needs.” Lincoln Rackhouse has grown through
• 365 Data Centers Acquires Sungard Availability Facilities: 365 Data Centers has agreed to add 20 facilities to its network with the acquisition of the U.S. assets of Sungard Availability, which filed for bankruptcy protection in April. The Sungard facilities come with 1 million square feet of data center space and 53 megawatts of available power. “This acquisition demonstrates 365 Data Centers’ adherence to its network-centric colocation growth strategy,” said Bob DeSantis, 365 Data Centers CEO. “We have already successfully doubled our business two times since inception in 2017 by acquiring, financing, integrating, and growing quality assets. We look forward to doing the same with the addition of the Sungard colocation and network portfolio, which will further enable us to provide quality services, grow our customer base, and deliver exceptional financial performance, all of which benefits our customers, employees, and investors.” News reports place the deal price at $52 million.
• Encore Affiliate Buys Lexis-Nexis Data Center in Ohio: A data center building leased to LexisNexis outside Dayton, Ohio, has been bought by Cincinnati IT consultant Encore Technologies. The 73,632 SF facility was built in 1980 and sits on 12.56 acres. Encore provides colocation, cloud, and various MSP offerings from its existing 60,000 SF facility. Lexis-Nexis told local media that its lease remains in place and the sale to a new landlord “will have no impact on our current business or our future plans.”
• StratCap Completes Purchase of Milwaukee Facility Leased by Expedient: StratCap Data Centers says it has completed the purchase of a 28,500 SF data center near Milwaukee. The property was built in 2008 and is currently leased to Expedient, a multi-cloud and managed services provider that operates over 20 data center locations. “We were able to diversify our portfolio in an off-market transaction with what we believe is an attractive asset acquired below appraised value, with a high-quality tenant, in a growing data center market,” said Bryan Marsh, CEO of StratCap Data Centers.
• GI Partners Acquires Mission-Critical Portfolio in Northern Virginia: GI Partners, a leading private alternatives investment firm, has announced the acquisition of five “Always On” properties representing 860,000 square feet and located in the nation’s leading market for defense technology employment, on behalf of its Essential Tech + Science Fund (GI Partners ETS Fund LP, the “ETS Fund”). The buildings are leased to many of the largest defense and government contracting companies in the U.S.  “These properties are located near the center of one of the biggest technical operations markets and communications clusters in North America, and are leased to top government contractors who use these buildings and infrastructure to provide mission critical technology services and research,” said John Sheputis, Managing Director of GI Partners and Head of the ETS Fund. “The continual operation of these properties during the recent pandemic demonstrates the physical value of this real estate to the U.S.’s national intelligence and defense agencies.”
• datacenterHawk Bought by Simplify Compliance: datacenterHawk, a leading SaaS provider of real-time information on the data center real estate market, has been acquired by Simplify Compliance, a portfolio company of Leeds Equity Partners. datacenterHawk will join Simplify Compliance under its CCMI brand, which develops and delivers specialized, intelligent telecom data solutions and content-rich resources to communications service providers and the enterprise market. “We’re excited to be a part of the Simplify Compliance team,” said David Liggitt, President of datacenterHawk. “We care deeply about empowering people to make better data center decisions by providing accurate information through the datacenterHawk platform. This acquisition will accelerate our ability to enable clients in the data center market to make better, informed decisions over the long term. I look forward to leading the next phase of the datacenterHawk platform and am excited about what’s to come.” Congratulations to David and the entire team at datacenterHawk, which has been a partner of Data Center Frontier on many of our market reports.

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