NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Archer Datacenters, LLC and its affiliates (“Archer”) announced the launch of a joint venture with Evoque, a portfolio company of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. Evoque will provide ongoing development and management services for Archer’s Nashville Hyperscale campus (“Archer Nashville”).
Archer’s Nashville campus presents a unique opportunity in the broader Nashville metropolitan area and Central Southeast region that to date has been underserved by digital infrastructure, despite robust population and economic growth over the past decade.
With highly favorable demographic tailwinds, an attractive business climate, and a diverse base of local, national and global enterprises, the Nashville metropolitan area has become one of the fastest growing economic engines in the country. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the Nashville metropolitan area population grew by 19.1% between 2010 and 2020, compared to the national average rate of 6.7%. A highly educated workforce and an attractive cost of doing business relative to other large metropolitan areas has led to billions of dollars of investments in relocations and expansions by companies across the technology, financial services, and healthcare industries. These include institutions such as Amazon, Oracle, Meta, Google, Alliance Bernstein, Ernst & Young, Vanderbilt University, HCA Healthcare, Dollar General, Asurion, Nissan North America, Bridgestone Americas, and General Motors.
As part of its focus on strategic, emerging markets, Archer identified Nashville as an attractive data center market opportunity in 2018 and purchased a 28.5-acre land parcel approximately 35 miles from downtown Nashville in Gallatin, Tennessee. With an electrical substation adjacent to the parcel and access to scaled power and diverse connectivity routes, the location is ideal for a data center campus designed to serve the region’s growing colocation and hyperscale demand. Over the past few years, Archer’s market vision has been validated through the launch of a $600 million hyperscale data center campus by Google and a $1 billion+ data center campus by Meta, the latter of which is located adjacent to the Archer Nashville campus in Gallatin.
The strategic partnership with Evoque aligns Archer with a world-class data center developer and operator to accelerate the expansion of its Nashville campus. Given the existing 82,000 square foot data center shell, the partnership believes it can now offer the fastest time to market of any scaled capacity option in the broader region. In addition to the initial facility, the campus provides flexibility for multiple additional buildings to support both single tenant as well as multi-tenant colocation facilities. The project is scalable both on the existing site as well as an adjacent 32.5-acre parcel that is expected to be purchased imminently. The substation is run by Gallatin Department of Electricity (“GDE”) with current access to 40MW of utility power. Long-term expandability of 100+MW is also possible in concert with the continuously updated transmission capacity of the Tennessee Valley Authority (“TVA”), the largest public utility in the nation.
TVA’s commitment to modernizing its renewable energy portfolio, bringing substantial generation resources to the region for data centers, is a large part of what initially attracted Archer to the region. Archer has worked with the TVA to structure renewable energy solutions that will continue to evolve as the industry matures. Evoque’s parent company Brookfield has a substantial portfolio of renewable energy assets (including within the TVA’s jurisdiction). The partnership has a staunch commitment to sustainability.
The campus is well-connected across the local Nashville metropolitan area and nationally through robust on and near-net access to multiple enterprise-grade fiber providers including Lumen, Zayo, Windstream, AT&T, Comcast and CEMC. Lumen, in particular, is on-net and capable of offering dark fiber solutions to the site with up to 100G in bandwidth capacity.
“We are pleased to have realized another milestone in our vision for Nashville. Thanks to local partners including GDE, Gallatin Economic Development Agency and TVA, we are now in a position to help deliver the premier scalable, sustainable, and fastest-to-market data center campus in the Nashville metropolitan area. We look forward to a long-term partnership with Evoque as we continue to focus on renewable energy and sustainability-driven opportunities in other strategic, underserved markets around the country,” said Jordan Milman, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Archer Datacenters.
“Evoque is thrilled to build upon Archer’s vision and continue developing a regional data center hub for enterprise and hyperscale to connect and scale,” said Andy Stewart, Chief Executive Officer at Evoque. “Our team is committed to making Evoque Nashville’s data center campus a best-in-breed, customer centric solution that delivers the security, performance, and sustainability that data center customers demand.”
"TVA and Gallatin Department of Electricity congratulate Archer Datacenters and Evoque on their decision to collaborate in Gallatin, Tennessee. Helping to attract jobs and investment to the region by providing low-cost, clean, reliable energy is fundamental to TVA’s mission of service. We are proud to partner with the City of Gallatin and Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development to further that mission by supporting companies like Archer and Evoque, and we celebrate this announcement together,” said John Bradley, TVA Senior Vice President of Economic Development.
“We are proud to have advised Archer Datacenters on this marquee strategic partnership that we believe will benefit all parties involved and bring critical infrastructure to the broader Nashville region in a sustainable manner,” said Irtiaz Ahmad, Managing Director at Solomon Partners Securities LLC.
Solomon Partners Securities, LLC served as exclusive financial advisor and placement agent to Archer Datacenters on the transaction, while Goodwin Procter LLP and Carter Shelton, PLC served as legal counsel. Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Mayer Brown LLP served as legal counsel for Evoque.
About Archer Datacenters
Founded in 2018, Archer Datacenters is a data center platform established to address the growing demand to process, store, and transmit digital information. Archer is focused on identifying, acquiring and developing greenfield data center opportunities with access to cost-efficient renewable energy in strategic, emerging markets across the U.S. that are currently underserved by the wholesale market. Archer provides flexible and customizable solutions for our customers with a focus on secure, scalable, flexible wholesale colocation data centers that facilitate hybrid IT strategies. Archer’s inaugural project is a greenfield Hyperscale development campus outside Nashville, which features a strategic joint venture partnership with Evoque Digital Infrastructure Evolved™, a portfolio company of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. Archer was founded by Jordan Milman, who currently serves as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and David Bartholomai currently serves as its Chief Operating Officer.
About Evoque
Evoque Digital Infrastructure Evolved™, based in Dallas, offers local and global businesses an unparalleled range of services and solutions across highly connected markets. Evoque provides companies with a unified offering of colocation, connectivity, and cloud engineering. Evoque’s market-first Multi-Generational Infrastructure (MGI™) strategy enables its clients worldwide to develop and utilize both reliable colocation and hybrid cloud offerings for all businesses taking an application-first approach. Evoque delivers a combination of connectivity, security, and redundancy that leaders increasingly require in their digital transformation initiatives. The company supports a diversified base of mid- to large-size enterprise and hyperscale customers across multiple segments, helping them comply with regulations like HIPAA, NIST, ISO and more. Evoque is a portfolio company of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, a leading global infrastructure asset manager that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. Visit https://www.evoquedcs.com/ for more information.
CONTACT
Jordan Milman – Founder & Chairman of Archer Datacenters, LLC
jordan.milman@archerdatacenters.com
