EdgeConneX Pays $14M for Data Center Dev Site Near Doral

In a world where companies rely on speedy internet and ample data storage space, EdgeConneX is aiming to build a facility that can provide both.

EdgeConneX wants to build a nearly 173,000-square-foot data center on land it purchased at the Beacon Station industrial park in west Miami-Dade County, according to records. An entity led by Juan Fayen and Juan Ramos sold the 6.3-acre site for $13.7 million.

The data centers infrastructure developer proposes 6,200 square feet for offices and storage, and nearly 167,000 square feet for the data center, according to an application filed to Miami-Dade last year. The project would include servers, storage, network gear, racks, power distribution systems, transformers, chillers and generators

Founded in 2009, EdgeConneX’s two other data centers in Miami-Dade are the 32,000-square-foot facility at 2132 Northwest 114th Avenue in Sweetwater, and the 65,500-square-foot center at 475 Northeast 185th Street near Miami Gardens, according to the company’s website and property records.

Overall, the company has developed more than 50 data centers across North and South America, as well as in Europe, since 2013. EdgeConneX CEO Randy Brouckman and COO Edmund Wilson co-founded the firm. It lists headquarters in Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore.

In South Florida, data centers have traded sporadically in recent years. In September, global telecommunications company American Tower paid $34 million for a data center at 2100 Northwest 84th Avenue in Doral that Baptist Health had owned for 18 years.

In years past, Principal Real Estate Investors picked up a T-Mobile center at 4850 Northwest 103rd Avenue in Sunrise for $26 million, and Spanish multinational telecommunications company Telefonica sold a data center at 11300 Northwest 25th Street in Doral for $44 million.

The deal activity comes as demand for data centers has been high due to companies’ reliance on quick connectivity and data storage. In one of the biggest signs of the asset class’ health, Blackstone bought data center provider QTS Realty Trust for $10 billion in 2021. The deal gave Blackstone more than 7 million square feet of data center space in North America and Europe.

Yet, not everyone is a believer in data centers’ long-term viability. Short seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the Enron collapse, made a bet against legacy brick-and-mortar data centers last year, saying that the biggest cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, may eventually develop their own data centers to their own specifications, as they also are the biggest data centers tenants.