Local entrepreneur enters data center space
A new liquid-cooled data center is being developed in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
HydraVault, a new data center developer, is behind the scheme, and says the facility will be “designed from the ground up” for AI and financial systems.
The 20MW two-story facility, located at 2538 South Wabash Avenue, will offer densities up to 200kW per rack, utilizing hybrid air and liquid cooling systems (including direct-to-chip and rear-door heat exchangers as well as hot/cold aisle containment). It will achieve a PUE of 1.19 and feature a closed-loop, waterless cooling system.
Construction will begin in Fall 2025, it is expected to be ready for clients in late 2026.
HydraVault is led by founder Scott Greenberg. He is also president of real estate firm ECD Company and Dreamweaver Hotels.
"Training, inferencing, financial services, and medical research, among other industries, are accelerating faster than the infrastructure designed to support them," said Greenberg. "We've designed – and will build – a city center AI factory for the future. The power density per square foot of building area in HydraVault, combined with the most advanced components demanded by the next generations of chip technology, makes HydraVault the definitive next-generation data center."
Other members of HydraVault hail from data center advisory firm CardiffPoint, as well as Greenberg’s other firm, GSD Decisions.
Plans for the development first surfaced in March. Previously a truck-trailer parking lot site, Greenberg first bought the land in 2020, paying almost $7 million. The site was previously zoned by Greenberg for a 108,000 sq ft esports stadium, but plans fell through.
Chicago has a well-developed data center market, with the likes of Digital Realty, Centersquare, Iron Mountain, Stream, Stack, CyrusOne, NTT, Prime, CoreSite, DataBank, ColoCrossing, EdgeConneX, Cogent, Microsoft, ColoHouse, T5, Edged, AWS, Meta, Compass, Colovore, Lumen, and Equinix all having a live presence or developing in or around the city.
Source: DCD
