Now on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond: One slightly used data center

With Bed Bath & Beyond filing for bankruptcy last month, it’s liquidation-sale time. That doesn’t mean just  blankets and cookware; it also includes its data center in North Carolina. Not just its servers but the whole facility.

The data center in Claremont, N.C., was built in 2013 with a total of 47,500 square feet, 9,500 feet of which is raised floor space, with the ability to double the amount of raised floor space and boost the total power from 1MW to 3.5MW.

It is rated a Tier III on the data-center ranking scale of I through IV. Tier III data centers have redundant components and infrastructure for power and cooling, with a guaranteed 99.982% availability.

The site has standard power plus water chiller systems with N+1 redundancy. Fiber connectivity is provided by AT&T, and its physical security includes a man-trap and electronic locks at the main building entrance and card-entry access control at the main entrance and data halls.

The facility itself is located just outside what is called the Charlotte Metro Data Center Corridor, where companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Boeing, Disney, and Meta have all set up shop.

This isn’t the first time a data center has been auctioned off. When Bear Stearns collapsed in 2008, it sold off data centers in New Jersey. But Ashish Nadkari, group vice president and general manager within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization, isn’t expecting a bidding war for Bed, Bath & Beyond’s.

“Twenty years ago perhaps it would have been sold for a reasonable price. I cannot imagine it fetching anything meaningful to recover investment costs in today’s day and age,” he said. “Data center facilities are becoming less and less attractive to firms. Besides, when companies build data centers they prefer to take a clean slate approach. Bed and Bath’s data center may be super modern, but it is not built to the specifications of the acquiring company. So they largely acquire it for the floor space and technologies in it.”

The auction will be some time this summer.