CoreSite building $65M data center in South Loop

CoreSite Realty plans a 169,000-square-foot data center in the South Loop, joining a growing number of data centers on the South Side.

The Denver-based data center giant has started work on the four-story building at 1432 South Clinton Street known as “CH2,” according to Bisnow. Building permit documents peg the cost of the project at $65 million, Chicago Construction News reported.

CoreSite bought the two-acre property last year for $4.5 million, Crain’s reported at the time.

The 18-megawatt center joins CoreSite’s “CH1” facility at 427 South LaSalle Street near the Chicago Board of Trade.

Chicago is one of the top data-center markets in the country, and a recent JLL report said a total of 42,500 square feet of data center space was under construction at the start of this year, enough to add 12 megawatts of capacity. But another 140,000 square feet of projects are planned with the potential to add 20.5 more megawatts of capacity.

While suburban Elk Grove Village is the main hub of data center activity in the Chicago area, the South Side is gaining interest from developers, in part because of its proximity to a data center on Cermak Road that is among the biggest in the world.

CIM Group and 1547 Critical Systems Realty last year bought a data center in the South Loop, only months after acquiring a property on the South Side with plans to turn it into a 24 megawatt data center. Hilco Redevelopment Partners, meanwhile, wants to build a large data center campus on the site of a former coal-burning power plant in Pilsen. [Bisnow] — John O’Brien