“Durham data center coming in June, already hiring”

By Amanda Jones Hoyle, Staff Writer, Triangle Business Journal

Sentinel Data Centers, the largest of all the area data center projects proposed in the last year, is “deep in construction” and has started hiring key staff members to prepare for the Durham facility’s opening date in June.

Sentinel co-president Todd Aaron was in Raleigh on Thursday attending a data center conference event and took a few minutes to update Triangle Business Journal on the progress of his company’s largest data center building project underway in Durham.

“The data center community in North Carolina is very vibrant with a lot of activity,” Aaron says.

New Jersey-based Sentinel Data Centers announced in October plans to build a nearly $200 million data center building in Durham. It acquired the former 420,000-square-foot Silver Line Windows manufacturing plant at 2223 Northeast Creek Parkway in Durham for that purpose.

Aaron says the company is using about 120,000 square feet of space for its first phase of construction, and future expansion of the building will happen as customer demand warrants, but he anticipates the building will be completed by 2015.

Sentinel has hired former U.S. Navy officer Matt Baker as its Durham site director. It has hired Brian Baker, formerly with Hosted Solutions of Raleigh, as its vice president of Southeast business development. Aaron says they are interviewing prospects for another 15 to 20 job positions that will be filled by June.

The Sentinel data center project is the largest of at least six data center operators that have announced plans to open new buildings in the Triangle in the next year.

Austin, Texas-based OnRamp announced plans in early February that it will open a 12,000-square-foot data center operation in a former Stock Building Supply building in northwest Raleigh.

Amanda Jones Hoyle covers commercial and residential real estate. Follow her on Twitter @TBJrealestate

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