Half of Sabey Data Centers' Downtown behemoth (375 Pearl St) could become an office with city skyline views. (Now humans and data servers must put aside their differences and co-habitate.)

Sabey's namesake John Sabey tells us the firm is offering 500k SF to office tenants at Intergate.Manhattan, the more than 1M SF data center skyscraper it purchased in 2011. John is quick to point out that some office space at Intergate.Manhattan was always in the works, but the firm is upping the amount. John says while demand has been good for the data center space, “it hasn't been spectacular.”

There is a trade-off. The rents for office space are a lot less than what Sabey could achieve with data center revenue. But John says the firm is fielding a lot more demand for office users, which could fill Intergate.Manhattan faster. “If you look at what is available in 250k SF chunks and up in the city, there are not a ton of those large contiguous spaces available without going to a brand new building… or to One World Trade Center or Two World Trade Center,” he says. Gross rents are around $50/SF for office space.

Some of Sabey's latest leasing victories at Intergate.Manhattan include Windstream and the Amsterdam Internet Exchange. Pictured: AMS-IX CEO Job Witteman, the Mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan (no relation to Bill van der Blasio), and Sabey's Dan Meltzer. Much of the office demand will come from tech companies that want to be next to their data centers, he says. (You thought you stopped having a security blanket years ago, but it just changed shape.) “It was a product we were already getting interest in," John adds. And the quicker you lease up a building, "the quicker the cash flow comes in.”