Sterling Network Exchange has purchased for $3.3 million a parcel adjacent to where it is developing its Downtown Phoenix Telecom Exchange. The company plans to build a 400,000-sf mixed-use structure on the 1.95-acre site, which is at the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Van Buren Street. The company hopes to complete the facility in the fourth quarter of 2001.

Sterling Network Exchange is in the midst of converting the 320,000-sf building at 120 E. Van Buren St. into a telecom hotel and earlier this month purchased an industrial building near Sky Harbor International Airport, which the company is converting into another telecom hotel.

The Chicago-based company provides core bandwidth to a variety of telecom carriers, such as local phone companies, Web hosts and application service providers.