JCD Group, an Ireland-based commercial property company, has announced its plans to invest over €200 million in the development of a mega data center campus in Cork City, Ireland. JCD Group plans to develop a 32-acre site at the former Mitsui Denman plant in Little Island, an industrial area on the outskirts of the city. The price paid for the plot is thought to be close to €100,000 per acre, although the company has not officially commented on the site cost.
The company will get access to a 60MW electrical grid connection to an adjoining substation in Little Island and is planned for delivery in 2017. The 60MW available capacity would provide enough power to support current proposed data centers on the campus terrain while maintaining additional capacity to support future expansion.
A JCD spokesperson told the Irish Examiner that demands for the data center site has been strong to date. Planning permission would be due in a number of weeks to transform the site into a state-of-the-art technology campus with over 275,000 square feet of colocation data center space. The company would intend commencing site works immediately then, with a view to delivering the first data center by mid-2017.
The proposed data center campus would create about 150 new jobs in Cork. These data center development plans by JCD Group follow the news of Cork seeing its connectivity substantially improving as a result of the Hibernia Network subsea cable landing last year. As a result of the cable, Cork would be able to offer a low-latency connection between the EU and U.S. East Coast.
