A St. Louis-based cloud computing firm is making a major investment in downtown, a welcome sign of growth for the ailing downtown district.
TierPoint, an IT company that offers a portfolio of services such as security and hybrid cloud consulting, will spend $150 million to turn a building in the 2300 block of Locust Street into an enterprise-grade data center.
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“This investment is a direct response to the exceedingly strong demand we’re seeing overall for data center services, including the large-scale, high-density colocation services required for artificial intelligence and other GPU-accelerated workloads,” TierPoint chairman and CEO Jerry Kent says.
This major move by TierPoint, which maintains more than 40 data centers across 20 U.S. markets, is spurred by a spike in desire for data center services, including managed private and public cloud options, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity solutions.
“TierPoint is an industry leader in deploying these AI workloads since 2018, and we’ve seen demand explode over the past year,” Kent says. “In sourcing facilities to answer this demand, it became readily apparent that the 2300 Locust Street building was an ideal candidate, given its location, size, structural integrity, access to utility power, and fiber routes.”
Kent sees this as a multi-year project. TierPoint expects to complete the first phase in the latter half of 2025 by building 22,600 square feet of data center space, supporting up to 80 construction jobs and nine permanent jobs at the facility.
In the near term, TierPoint plans to deliver 5 megawatts of power, which will be scalable to 20 megawatts in the future. Over the next four years, TierPoint has committed to quadrupling its capacity to its anchor tenant, as needed, which Kent says will add significant additional investment, construction, and permanent jobs.
TierPoint’s investment is the latest addition to an ongoing effort to jumpstart the city’s downtown corridor, joining other under-development or recently-finished projects like CITYPARK, The Victor, Union Station, the Brickline Greenway, and the Jefferson Arms Hotel.
“We are seeing signs of growth and investment in the downtown area, and we’re optimistic and believe there’s great potential in that area,” Kent said. “Kurt Weigle, chief downtown officer for Greater St. Louis, Inc., has said that realizing downtown’s potential will take both time and the commitment of multiple parties to ‘rethink’ how downtown facilities might be used for new purposes. Creating a world-class data center from an office building is just one example of a new purpose.”
Still, TierPoint sees the Downtown St. Louis project as a long-term endeavor. Kent even likens the effort to running a marathon, taking one step at a time.
“And we will get to the finish line,” Kent said. “We believe that by bringing more foot traffic and jobs into the city—both temporary and permanent—our investment should have a positive ripple effect on other businesses, from restaurants to housing. Our investment shows faith in our downtown, and we expect it will spur others to invest.”
