Primary tenants for the interconnection facility at 325 Hudson Street include the likes of Verizon Global Wholesale, Reliance and Level 3, with more customers announcements expected to be made in the coming months.
The facility, which is scheduled to be operational this April, is part of a partnership between industry figure Hunter Newby, Jamestown Properties and Amerimar Enterprises. The building is said to have direct access to major transatlantic cables, such as the FLAG Atlantic.
Newby, who was one of the original founders of Telx and also presently serves as CEO of Allied Fiber, said the facility will tap into the growing need for carrier diversity. “This is really about speed to market, creating physical diversity and creating an economic environment for the network operators, which are now operating on some thin margins,” he said.
Newby added that the advent of 100G deployment has meant many of the existing carrier hotels are “reaching a point where carriers need diversity”.
Stretching over 240,000 sq ft and 10 stories, 325 Hudson Street was redeveloped into a telecoms centre in 1998 and acquired by the partnership earlier last year. It came complete with critical features, such as heavy floor loading capacity, 12-foot ceilings, HVAC, power and back-up power supply.
Work is already underway on the first phase of the development, which will include cage and cabinet spaces as well as a dedicated area for customers to make physical interconnections with one another, called the Meet Me Area (MMA). Newby described 325 Hudson as a “time capsule” when he and his partners first discovered the building.
“There was a considerable amount of metro fibre already terminated in the basement. It was fledgling but the key infrastructure was there and the master plan was already done.”
