Venyu Blog

I can’t say for certain for certain that in the classic 1980 John Landis directed cult classic “The Blues Brothers” whose nearly wall-to-wall car chases— including the one where the so-called “BluesMobile” improbably somersaults back over the vehicle driven by Henry Gibson’s “OberFuhrer”—ever included action in one of, to quote Elwood Blues, “The Honorable Richard M. Daley’s” underground parking garages. Still, if that movie was being produced today, the garage profiled in this post, which is part parking garage and part data center (ok, projected part data center) might have made an appearance.

According to this post by Beth Bacheldor of IT World, there is a plan being considered that would convert an underground parking garage into a data center in downtown Chicago.

The news, reported first by the Chicago Sun Times details that a Chicago-based investment group has pitched the city fathers on using up to 400 spaces in one of the garages they’ve acquired–located in the East Loop in Chicago’s central business district into a data center.

The garages, according to the Sun Times article, contain more than 9,000 spaces, the majority of which go unused except during special events along Chicago’s lakefront. Not surprisingly, the investors, which own a 99-year lease on the spaces, are looking for a better return on their investment.

Bacheldor includes a pair of dissenting facts that either separately or in combination would suggest converting a garage, even partly into a data center, is problematic. The first, Grubb & Ellis Co., a broker that represents users of data centers — raised concerns about whether the plan was feasible or cost-effective, the article states. That’s because to repurpose a parking garage into a data center facility would require significant build.

Moreover, Bacheldor references an underground flood of Chicago in April 1992 when the damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River opened into a breach which flooded basements and underground facilities throughout the Chicago Loop with an estimated 250 million gallons of water. Cleanup and repairs cost the city an estimated $1.95 billion. [Big oops if your data center shorts out and your data literally needs mopping up.]

To put a fine point on it she mentions something called the Pionen Data Center in Stockholm Sweden which is buried in a former military bunker and nuclear shelter under Stockholm’s city streets. Reportedly able to withstand a nuclear impact, it includes 2-foot thick armored doors and two German V12 submarine engines on standby for backup power. Bacheldor, as do I, wonder what the cost was for that particular conversion. I’d imagine lots of Swedish kronas. Like armored truckfulls. Convoys of them. All lined up. For kilometers in every direction.

Now, I’ll grant you Venyu’s state of the art hosting facilities, including our newest inside the Cyber Innovation Center located within the National Cyber Research park in Shreveport-Bossier aren’t as exotic as an underground bunker in Sweden or, frankly, as dreary as a parking garage in downtown Chicago – but time and again it does get the job (e.g. backup and rapid recovery) done for our customers.

Still, if you want to check out that parking garage for yourself, let Elwood Be Your Guide: