The former Airborne Express building at 3101 Western Avenue was most recently home to Isilon Systems.

Digital Fortress plans to open a new 25,000 square foot data center just north of downtown Seattle this July, adding to a facility that the newly-formed company operates at the Intergate West campus south of Seattle.

The building — located at 3101 Western Avenue — will certainly be recognizable to Seattle area techies. That’s because its the former home of Airborne Express and Isilon Systems.

After its sale to EMC, Isilon moved to Pioneer Square, leaving a large chunk of the building vacant.

Lee Pallat, director of sales and client services for Digital Fortress, said that the new location is ideal since they can bring in additional power from Seattle City Light in order to transform the space into a modern-day data center. Pallat added that it’s different from other colocation facilities at the nearby Westin Building and Fisher Plaza in that they own all of the “mission critical infrastructure.”

“This is the operational model that we have carried over since we built out our first facility 12+ years ago and has enabled us to provide beginning-to-end enterprise level service,” said Pallat.

Digital Fortress was formed last month when digital.forest Inc. and Fortress Colocation Centers merged. The company’s leadership includes executive chairman Mark Hughes — the former chief financial officer at Inflow — and Chief Development Officer Tim Doherty — the former CEO of Fortress Colocation.

“The downtown Seattle colocation market has been underserved for some time,” said Doherty in a press release. “Digital Fortress will now be able to move its successful, high-density model to the downtown core and take advantage of the redundant capabilities available from Seattle City Light’s power distribution network to deliver services meeting Tier 3 datacenter standards.”

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