Just as the web is replacing newspapers, so data centers could replace their printing presses, taking over large buildings with existing grid connections close to urban centers.
As newspapers move online, the buildings that once housed their printing presses need new occupants.
The Minnesota Star Tribune has just sold its old printing plant on the edge of Minneapolis to the aptly named property developer Legacy Investing, which plans to create a new data center there. has found the ideal way to bring them back to life.
This is the second such move by Legacy. It has already bought a building in downtown Minneapolis that it has transformed into a data center for artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
These old buildings, already connected to power, are an attractive option for developers — especially with some grid operators threatening power cuts for new-build data centers during power shortages.
Legacy is taking a small-is-beautiful approach rather than replicating the massive data centers being built for Big Tech firms. Those are the size of small towns and consume huge volumes of water and hundreds of megawatts of power, while the capacity of Legacy’s downtown building is about 30 MW, and it expects the Star Tribune site to host around 20 MW of data center equipment.
The scaled-down approach may well be an attractive option for operators in the future.
