Page 6 - BusinessWest Sept. 29, 2021
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 Putting the Pieces Together
Westfield Data-center Project Makes a Hard Push for the Finish Line
    Demetrios Panteleakis
 It’s called a ‘hyper-scale data center.’ That’s the name attached to a $2.7 billion proposal planned for a 155- acre parcel in Westfield. The complicated project, now entering the local-approval phase, has cleared perhaps the biggest hurdle — the aggregation of a site that can check a unique set of boxes, including accessibility to huge amounts of power and data. If it comes to fruition — and there are still many challenges to overcome — the project could make the region a player in the emerging sector known as Big Data.
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“I probably know every inch of it by now,” Panteleakis, the principal commercial broker with Springfield-based Macmillan Group, who was charged with assembling the par- cel, told BusinessWest, adding that he’s been through it in every type of weather imagin- able. “I think my family thought I had gotten into hiking and the outdoors.”
These walks in the woods — and wetlands — were a necessary part of a complicated process to aggregate land for what could be the largest private development the region has ever seen and one of the largest initia- tives of its kind anywhere — a $2.7 billion proposal to build a massive data center (a ‘hyper-scale data center,’ as it’s called) that will attract the likes of Amazon, Google, and
By George O’Brien
emetrios Panteleakis says he spent a good part of the winter, spring, and some of the summer walk- ing through all 150 acres
“Finding the right location in New England for a hyper-scale data-center development is difficult.
Facebook.
Plans call for constructing 10 buildings
totaling 2.7 million square feet over the next 12 to 18 years, said Erik Bartone, CEO of Servistar Realty, the project’s developer. He told BusinessWest he hopes to obtain local approvals by the end of the year and state approvals by mid-2022, and break ground in 2023.
It’s a daring project, one that comes com- plete with all kinds of large numbers and adjectives (like hyper-scale) that connote size
 of mostly raw land in the northwest corner of Westfield.
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   6 SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
FEATURE
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