January 14, 2019 – Safanad, the global principal investment firm, today announced the expansion of its Internet Infrastructure platform through the acquisition of two additional data centers encompassing 195,000 square feet of space in Chicago, Illinois. The data centers will be operated by Element Critical, a leading provider of data center and IT infrastructure services that is jointly owned by Safanad and its industry partner, Industry Capital.
The two facilities are located 17 miles west of downtown Chicago and two miles from O’Hare International airport. Cumulatively featuring 111,000 square feet of raised floor and up to 15 megawatts of available power capacity, they have direct ties to existing telecommunications and fiber carriers, including fiber routes to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and East Cermak.
Ziad Dannaoui, President of Safanad, commented, “Internet Infrastructure forms a key and strategic component of Safanad’s existing investment plan to create and actively manage attractive opportunities across sectors underpinned by long-term macroeconomic trends. We entered the data center sector in 2016 with Industry Capital and are excited by the momentum and growth the platform has accomplished to date.”
Safanad’s data centers are highly secure operational platforms serving some of the world’s largest companies and government agencies, including several Fortune 100 businesses who rely on Element Critical to provide the data center and IT infrastructure solutions underpinning the support of sensitive mission-critical operations.
“With this acquisition, Element Critical now operates four data centers in three significant and geographically dispersed markets. Adding Chicago to its existing Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia facilities, Element Critical now manages nearly 500,000 square feet of data center space in the U.S.,” added Craig Kahler, Senior Director of Private Equity at Safanad.
“Element Critical is building a world-class data center platform and the acquisition of these strategically located facilities in Chicago was a natural next step in our national expansion,” said Ken Parent, Element Critical’s CEO. “We will be investing more than $40 million to further develop and enhance the facilities to immediately provide strategic, customized and flexible colocation solutions.”