Manhattan’s Iconic 60 Hudson Street Gets a Power Boost

NEW YORK - For a window into the ambitions of DataGryd, look to the rooftop of 60 Hudson Street. High atop the iconic Manhattan communications hub, more than 370 feet above the the streets of Manhattan, a hatch in the roof is unlocking the building’s future.

That’s the entry point for the diesel generators that are expanding the power capacity at 60 Hudson. The generators must be installed by a crane, which lowers the 8,000-pound units into their new home on the 24th floor reinforced with additional steel girders. Two of the massive engines are in place, with four more to come.

The skyhatch and engine room are powering the expansion of data center space inside 60 Hudson, an art-deco landmark which has been a cornerstone in the development of America’s communications infrastructure. Built in 1929 as the headquarters for Western Union, the building powered the growth of the nation’s telegraph system and then evolved into a key telecom hub for AT&T and others. With the dawn of the Internet age, 60 Hudson became a key meeting place for networks, with fiber optic cable filling conduits that once delivered telegrams in pneumatic tubes.

But servers, switches and storage units are hungry for power, and 60 Hudson Street needed more of it. Enter DataGryd, a new data center company formed in 2012. The company’s founder, Peter Feldman, saw an opportunity to transform four floors at 60 Hudson into high-density space for service providers. To make it work, Feldman had to devise a way to expand the power and cooling capacity for the 80-year-old historic landmark building, located in a noise-sensitive neighborhood. It had to do all this without disturbing the current tenants, many of whom run mission-critical data operations

“We had to modernize and future-proof the building,” said Feldman. “We had to turn the building inside out to do it. But now we can meet future market demand.”

Telx ready to christen new space

The first phase of that plan comes to fruition this week, as colocation specialist Telx brings a new data center online on a full floor it has leased from DataGryd.

Expanding a building’s power capacity in an urban setting is a major challenge. The upgrades at 60 Hudson offered additional layers of complexity.

“This building is a landmark, and anything we wanted to do had to be approved,” Feldman said last week as he showed off the renovations. “People don’t like diesel generators or exhaust or noise. I’ve got to be sensitive to the impact on the neighbors. We worked with the landmarks commission and the city and the mayor on meeting our civic obligations.”

The plan featured several facets: adding more grid capacity from Con Edison, an on-site cogeneration facility, and additional generators to provide backup electricity. Tying these together is a utility-scale microgrid that can tap any generation source – the grid, the cogen plant or the generators. This would allow DataGryd to create an additional 240,000 square feet of high-density space within 60 Hudson.

Feldman knows the building well from his days as a co-founder of Telx, one of the largest tenants. He worked closely with the building’s owners and the management firm, Colliers International, to develop the renovation plan.