What’s Next For Digital Realty’s Seattle Data Center Plans?

A Texas company wants to place a data center right in the middle of downtown Seattle at the location of an old building. The problem is the city fathers are trying to decide whether they want to impose a one-year moratorium on all possible data centers in the city of Seattle. 

According to Geekwire.com,
‘Digital Realty of Austin, a real estate investment trust with more than 300 data centers worldwide, wants to demolish the building at 301 Virginia St. and replace it with a six-story structure: a data center on four floors plus a lab, office and retail space, permit filings show.’ 

Seattle may not want this. 

The problem for Digital Reality is that the Seattle City Council right now is trying to decide whether they want to impose a one-year moratorium on data centers in the Seattle area because of the possibility of potential power shortages. For their part, Digital Reality says this would not be a data center, this would be “a highly connected, network-dense facility, not an AI data center.” 

On the surface, this kind of sounds to me like they’re splitting hairs, but I guess the real test is going to be how much power and water they think they’re going to need to make this center function. 

This is not the first project that Digital Reality has brought to the Seattle area. They currently have what they are calling a “co-location data center” In the Westin Building at 2001 Sixth Ave.  

What happens to the old building? 

The property that Digital Reality is interested in now used to be a Bed, Bath and Beyond that closed, and it’s turned into a combination of art and live performance venue run by Cannonball Arts, the organization that produces the Bumbershoot Festival. 

Plans for the building at 301 Virginia St. would be to knock down the original building and build a new facility 6 stories high with four floors of servers, a lab and retail space on the bottom floor.