67,000-SF Telecom Space Returns to Market

MARLBOROUGH, MA-The data center built by the John Hancock Co. for its Financial Services group in 1980 will be empty as of April 2002.

The 67,000-sf building, constructed to decentralize computer data to a remote location, includes raised floors to run data cables under and redundant electrical systems so that power shortages do not affect computer operations. Hancock also installed a bombproof vault to store backup computer data tapes.

After Hancock moved the telecom facility back to the Boston headquarters the property had several tenants including the current one, Infinium Software Inc., a software company that is in the process of consolidating all of its Massachusetts offices back to its Cape Cod headquarters. With the burst of the dot-com bubble in the Bay State, some industry watchers say building adds to the already glutted inventory of overbuilt high-tech buildings. But broker Bill Sullivan of R.W. Holmes, who is marketing the property, tells Globest.com that many financial institutions as well as insurance firms are going into a “disaster recovery group” phase that re-emphasizes data decentralization to suburban areas. Other brokers in the area concur with Sullivan about the need for an already built out data center, but say that finding a new tenant might be easier than if the building was office rather than telecom space.