Officials Break Ground on New Data Center Development (PHOTOS)

Elk Grove Village officials joined executives at Forsythe Technology Wednesday to officially break ground on Forsythe Data Centers, the company’s first-ever foray into data center manufacturing.

Construction is already under way at the site, located at 1441 Touhy Ave., with the first phase of the development to be completed in early 2015. Once completed, Forsythe officials say it will be roughly the size of four football fields.

Steve Harris, Forsythe’s vice president of data center development, says this is an exciting move for the billion-dollar tech company. Building on 42 years of IT experience and more than 10 years of data center engineering expertise, Harris says the new facility is an answer to the slew of requests they've gotten over the years.

“After many years of listening to the needs of our clients and helping them build data centers and find colocation data center space, we made sure this data center facility has everything they have been asking us for,” Harris said in a statement.

Notable attendees included:

• Bill Brennan, President and CEO, Forsythe Technology
• Al Weiss, President, Forsythe Data Centers; Executive VP and CFO
• Steve Harris, VP Data Center Development, Forsythe Data Centers 
• James P. Petri, Village Trustee, Elk Grove Village
• Mathew J. Roan – Deputy Village Manager
• Richard J. Mikel –  Fire Chief
• Stephen F. Schmidt – Police Chief
• Josh Grodzin – Elk Grove Director Business Development and Marketing

The facility is being designed, engineered, powered and constructed with assistance of Environmental Systems Design, Inc., Duke Realty, Turner Construction, Emerson Network Power,Anixter and Commonwealth Edison.