Metro Edge executes a 75-year ground lease on a two-acre parcel in the Illinois Medical District to build and operate a state-of-the-art data center.
CHICAGO IL September 22, 2022 – Metro Edge Development Partners, a commercial real estate investment firm and Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), announced that the company has executed a 75-year ground lease on a 1.97-acre parcel in the Illinois Medical District (IMD) that includes exclusivity to build and operate a high-performance data center.
Metro Edge has begun planning and permitting for a 21 Megawatt (MW), five-story data center comprising approximately 191,000 square feet. The greenfield data center will be located two miles west of the Loop in Chicago in the IMD, which represents the largest concentration of healthcare institutions, biotech hubs, and tech incubators in the state. IMD is the second largest medical district in the country serving over 80,000 visitors daily, including 29,000 employees.
“Metro Edge was founded with the intention of building data centers in underserved urban locations,” said Craig Huffman, CEO of Metro Edge. “These infill locations are typically overlooked by traditional institutional owners but offer a unique opportunity to facilitate meaningful change in a community with a thoughtful, integrated development.”
A healthcare-anchored data center in the IMD can positively impact low-income and medically vulnerable communities on the West Side of Chicago while addressing the urgent need for many of the IMD’s anchor healthcare institutions to upgrade their outdated data center infrastructure. The Metro Edge site possesses robust access and low-latency proximity to the utilities, fiber, and power required for a world class data center.
“The Illinois Medical District offers a unique ecosystem of knowledge, collaboration and resources, plus the opportunity to impact the world’s next great healthcare innovation district,” said Allyson Hansen, Executive Director at the IMD. Together with Metro Edge, we will reshape the technology profile of the district and offer the local community access to connectivity and career opportunities that will make us competitive with other areas of Chicago.”
Metro Edge is currently fielding numerous pre-leasing requests from firms who see the new data center as an opportunity to gain access proximity to healthcare, technology, education, and life science organizations within the IMD and downtown Chicago.
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