Carter Validus is raising another fund, we learned this morning at our Atlanta Data Center Outlook event at The Ritz-Cartlon Buckhead. Carter Validus' John Regan says after closing on Mission Critical REIT I, the firm is now funding its Mission Critical REIT II, and it plans to raise much, much more this time. REIT I, at the end of the day, raised $1.6B-plus for its shopping spree in the past few years, including the firm's recent purchases of GE's and ETrade's data centers in Alpharetta. REIT II, John tells us, looks to raise $2.25B, and with leverage could exceed a buying power of $4B as it hunts for more medical facilities and data centers.
Here's our panel: QTS' Brian Johnston, Frank, Carter Validus' John Regan, Colo ATL's Tim Kiser (who moderated), Schneider Electric's Bryan Stevens, DPR Construction's Jeff Mason and Internap's Andy McBath. Bryan says the memory of Superstorm Sandy has actually pushed more companies to consider Atlanta and other safer cities as data backups.
Andy says that the revelation of US spying on private data has had its effects on customer demand. He cites how in 2013, Internap purchased Canadian company iWeb, and learned that a lot of companies were moving data to Canada due to the scare from The Patriot Act and revelations of spying. “The perception is that the data could be sort of seized,” Andy says. “Whether that's a perception or reality, it's there.”
We also learned that Comcast is taking a bulk of Atlanta-based T5 Data Center's T5@Portland facility now under construction. Sources tell us the cable and Internet provider will take the half of the 220k SF facility in Oregon. The Oregonian reported in September that a Fortune 100 company was poised to take 110k SF of the facility, but it did not identify the company. One of our panelists this morning was T5's Frank Lyles, but he declined to comment on news of Comcast.
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