Page 8 - BusinessWest Sept. 29, 2021

ters here.”
As for Panteleakis, the data-center project rep-
resents another bullet point on a résumé com- plete with a number of big projects with compli- cated logistics, something he’s becoming known for within the development industry.
Indeed, when he was not walking the Westfield property and negotiating with all those owners, he was flying to Miami to put the final touches
on a massive, $1 billion project that combines residential living with transportation, retail, and office space.
The two projects offered a number of differ- ent challenges, with COVID presenting new and different issues to contend with, he said, adding that they epitomize what has come to be one of his trademark talents — putting the many pieces together on complicated real-estate puzzles.
For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at how this complicated Westfield proj-
ect came together and how this initiative could change the landscape — in all kinds of ways.
Big Bytes
Panteleakis told BusinessWest that, on many of his flights to and from Florida, he didn’t have much company on the airplane.
“I was on a 747 out of Boston — because you couldn’t fly out of Bradley to Florida — that had two other people on it,” he said. “It was weird. Logan was a ghost town, Miami International was a ghost town; it was very strange.”
That was how things were as he was working on two massive projects on opposite ends of the Atlantic seaboard.
The Miami initiative was a complicated matter of putting the pieces together for a project called
Virgin MiamiCentral, a nine-acre living center
in the heart of the city that includes 3 million square feet of commercial, office, and retail space, capped with twin residential towers, each more than 40 stories high, sitting atop a train station and retail hub.
Meanwhile, what is now known as the West- field data-center campus became a very compli- cated matter of aggregating property that could meet all those unique requirements listed earlier.
In most all cases, the land required for such projects doesn’t come in one parcel, but several of them, which means negotiations on acquiring options — as in quiet negotiations — have to take place with a number of parties simultaneously.
Panteleakis, who compared it to cutting the Gordian knot, tried to put it in perspective for BusinessWest.
“We worked with about four or five different brokers in Western Mass. who represented some of the 11 owners, which at times made things easier, but a predominance of the owners self- represented,” he explained. “And that included people who had ongoing businesses, and it was very arduous and long and, of course, highly confidential.
“It was heavy lifting,” he went on, “and to see it at this stage is very gratifying.”
Overall, it took roughly 14 months to put the parcel in place to the point where the developer could move forward, he said, adding that the site, while challenged by wetlands and environmen- tal issues, provides the size, location, and direct access to the grid needed by Servistar and its eventual clients.
The company has a considerable amount of experience with such projects, said Bartone, add-
ing that Servistar has been in the electricity-pro- curement and energy- management business for 30 years, supporting large-scale commercial and industrial clients, including data and IT service clients.
“Our firm has provided advisory services to several data-center clients, including the man- agement and procurement of their wholesale
“There’s currently nothing of this scale in the region due primarily to very high retail electricity costs, high property taxes, and significant regulatory challenges.”
electricity requirements,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the company currently represents a hyper-scale data-center client that is looking to enter the New England market once local approv- als are obtained for the Westfield project.
Elaborating, he said there are several smaller- edge data centers in New England, including in the Boston area, but there are currently no hyper- scale data centers in New England, and for several reasons.
“There’s currently nothing of this scale in the region due primarily to very high retail electricity costs, high property taxes, and significant regu- latory challenges,” he explained. “Our firm spe- cializes in the wholesale electricity-procurement markets along with the integration of innova- tive load-management strategies to proactively reduce the electricity costs for data centers and
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8 SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
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