Prime Data Centers Plans Four-Story Project in Santa Clara

Wholesale data center developer Prime Data Centers will enter the Silicon Valley market with a project in Santa Clara, the company said this week. Prime, which recently launched its initial campus in Sacramento, says it will build a four-story, 121,000-square-foot data center at 1111 Comstock Street, adjacent to a key carrier hotel operated by Digital Realty.

Prime says it will begin construction within the next 60 days and will be ready to accept tenants in late 2021. The facility will deliver up to 9 megawatts of critical power.

“We are excited to develop this new facility in Santa Clara, one of the most sought-after data center locations in the world,” says Nicholas Laag, CEO of Prime Data Centers. “Prime Data Centers is breaking ground at this location so that we can continue to offer the most strategic and advantageous wholesale data center leasing in California.”

The new project will bring more data center inventory and competition to Silicon Valley, which is one of the largest and most important data center markets in the U.S., but also one of the most difficult places to build new data centers.

Santa Clara has long been the Data Center Capital of Silicon Valley due to competitive power pricing from the municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power. It’s the favored spot to deploy new hardware and services from the Valley’s marquee technology companies, as well as a legion of fast-moving startups. That’s why there’s 35 data centers are located in an 18-square mile municipality.

The entry of Prime is the latest in a number of data center construction projects in Santa Clara, which promise to bring a steady flow of new server space online in 2020 and 2021. Expansions are underway at Santa Clara sites for Vantage, CoreSite, NTT Global Data Centers (RagingWire), Colovore and Digital Realty.

Prime is a privately-held development firm owned by a real estate group group controlling $6 billion of assets. The company offers customers flexible ownership and leasing models for their projects, with options including sale-leasebacks or greenfield developments.

In January, Prime opened an 8MW data center facility located within McClellan Business Park in Sacramento California. The company also owns a fully-leased data center in Hayward, Calif.