RagingWire Offers Glimpse of Ashburn Project
RagingWire has given us a glimpse at its latest project: 80 acres in Ashburn, which will be home to 2M SF of its newest data center campus. (It's like looking at a "before they were famous" photo.)That's slated to include five buildings, making it the largest in Northern Virginia's Data Center Alley. The biggest building will be a two-story, 800k SF structure with office space and the others will be 150k SF single-story buildings. Construction starts this summer with the whole project taking five to 10 years. The California company only entered the Northern Virginia data center market two years ago and has one large Ashburn facility with five data center vaults. Vault 1 and Vault 2 are almost full. Vault 3 is scheduled to open in the next few weeks and Vaults 4 and 5 will soon follow.
The RagingWire exec team includes marketing VP Jim Leach, chief revenue officer Doug Adams, founder/CEO George Macricostas, COO Jason Weckworth, and sales director Dave Haskell. George started the company 14 years ago and opened its first data center in Sacramento. The company is a significant regional player on the West Coast. It came to Northern Virginia to be a national player and because the area has the second highest deal flow behind New York/New Jersey. (Plus, he probably got tired of perfect West Coast weather.)
This 1,600-ton water cool chiller, which rids the data center of heat, came this month from Florida via a 150-foot police-escorted truck. (If we had a police escort for our water canister we wouldn't always be late to the soccer game.) The new campus will have 250MWs of power, which could sustain 207,000 homes. RagingWire has two electrical patents and two pending and is working on mechanical cooling techniques using outside air. RagingWire's data center also has game rooms, lounge areas, sleek co-working spaces, conference rooms, and private offices for clients. RagingWire is also unique because it designs, builds, and operates its own data centers. Over half of its 400 employees are part of its construction operation. A filing with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which gave RagingWire customers a sales tax exemption, says the company plans to invest $150M and create 50 tech jobs over the next five years.
