THE HIGH-TECH CASTLE
The Globe Building’s roots have made it an attractive location for data centers, geospatial intelligence firms, innovative tech enterprise, as well as a new 75,000 SF multi-tenant SCIF.
Entrance to The Globe Building, “The High-Tech Castle” in St. Louis
Written by Dick Fleming | Originally Published in Geospatial World
Prior to its present status as a “location of choice” for Geospatial Intelligence companies; The Globe Building has had a storied history.
The massive Art Deco Globe Building traces its roots to the dramatic growth of St. Louis following the City’s hosting of the World’s Fair and the Olympics back in 1904. Originally built to serve as one of two major railroad stations in St. Louis, it was called the Illinois Terminal Railroad Building.
In its early days, The Globe Building became a hub of logistics and transportation infrastructure, which was essential to St. Louis’ robust growth in the 1920s.
Given the present 2022 attraction of Geospatial Intelligence firms, it’s noteworthy that several floors of the building were taken over by the U.S. War Department to house the Defense Mapping Agency during the Second World War, with hundreds of people working there every day, mapping and plotting logistics for both Europe and the Pacific during the World War II.
As the nation’s and St. Louis’ modes of transportation shifted in the 1950s, and passenger rail service was officially discontinued in 1958 – the building as a transportation hub became underutilized.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat newspaper, relocated in the building to accommodate larger presses, massive supplies of ink, and more paper. So, in 1959, the Illinois Terminal Railroad Building became the Globe-Democrat Building — with various floors dedicated to the advertising department, other floors for editorial departments, and massive printing presses in place, and huge barrels of ink arriving every day by rail, as well as the distribution of the newspaper every day.
The Globe Building found its next life as the new Millennium approached, its unique infrastructure made the building an ideal location for tech firms seeking a downtown location.
As the owners of The Globe Building have undertaken the stunning high-tech adaptive reuse of this landmark Building, they’ve described the “new Globe Building” as having, Big Space, Big Power, and Big Fiber.
The building is currently home to five separately owned and operated data centers
Big Space
The Globe Building’s unique physical attributes represented the necessary conditions for attracting and growing Data Centers — and now, for attracting and growing GEOINT and other tech firms:
A seven story, 550,000 SF building with 150,000 SF is currently occupied by a data center and telecom tenants.
Large, contiguous floor plates of up to 84,000 SF.
Floor loads of 250 lbs (113 kg)/SF on floors 1-4, 200 lbs (90kg)/ SF on floors five to seven, 150 lbs (68 kg)/ SF on the roof.
Floor-to-ceiling height ranges from 11.5 ft to 18.5 ft.
Two full-height passenger elevators, four freight elevators with capacity to 5,000 lbs (2,268 kg).
Secure pads on-site for generators.
Around-the-clock secured Building access.
On-site, 24/7, highly secure underground parking garage with almost 500 spaces.
Multiple widely-spaced open shafts for running vertical telecom infrastructure.
Extremely wide corridors that accommodate forklifts and pallet jacks for moving heavy telecom equipment.
“The Largest Carrier Hotel in the Region” – The Globe Building begins with 4 diverse points of entry for fiber providers, one at each corner of the building.
Diverse building conduits and five oversized risers running the height of the building are available to accommodate virtually any communication infrastructure.
The Globe’s redundant fiber entrances and “Meet Me Room” allow for efficient cost-effective inside plant build-outs and cross connections to any carrier or facility in the building.
Large open floor plates in the building allow datacenter tenants ample room to organize their power distribution infrastructure
Big Power
The Globe Building has the on-site power and other infrastructure to handle individual businesses’ power and cooling needs. This infrastructure features updated electrical power with brand new, dedicated Ameren (the region’s utility) basement substations and diverse utility feeds with true ‘A+B’ utility power.
More than 40,000 SF available on the rooftop, The Globe provides abundant roof space for cooling support equipment and wireless transmission.
72,000 SF of flat roof allows datacenter tenants to locate and easily service high efficiency cooling equipment
Big Fiber
The Globe’s ‘Meet Me Room’ offers tenants, carriers, and data centers the ability to interconnect in a shared “carrier-neutral” environment without incurring local loop fees.
The large climate-controlled ‘Meet Me Room’ with UPS-backed power provides diverse fiber paths throughout the building and supports multiple fiber providers. ‘Meet Me Room’ space accommodates 100 58 cm cabinets.
Individual point of presence (POP) sites — dedicated spaces ranging from 900 SF to several thousand SF — are part of The Globe’s Data Center facilities.
From the mid-1990s to today, The Globe has become a preferred location for data center companies, as well as creative agencies, video production firms, and now Geospatial Intelligence and other tech firms. They are all taking advantage of being wired into a hub of connectivity with data centers with massive access to redundant power transporting data in and out, and being securely stored.
Reflecting on what made the City of St. Louis an industrial giant in the past years, the same qualities and assets now propel The Globe Building forward as St. Louis aspires to become a Global Geospatial Intelligence Hub — as the St. Louis location for GEOINT leaders such as MAXAR, Ball Aerospace, the U.S. HQ for Sweden-based T-Kartor, and the North and South American HQ for Geospatial World.
Complementing these Geospatial assets, Westway Services now has a 75,000 SF multi-tenant SCIF under construction that is slated to open later this year. It is the largest of such facilities outside the Washington, D.C. area.
Moreover, The Globe has joined in the dramatic renovation of the 226,000 SF former St. Louis Post-Dispatch HQ, as the eventual home of Square and Cash App in ‘Downtown North’, an urban innovation district in St. Louis.
They’ve been joined in the District by NGA’s Moon Shot Labs at the T-REX innovation center, and more recently, by the corporate HQ, advanced manufacturing, and international distribution center for Stereotaxis, the global high-tech leader in robotic heart surgery.
All of this is located just blocks from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) $1.75- billion new 100-acre (40+ hectares), 3,100-job western HQ.
