The Globe Building Features and Advantages
With the Lobby Renovations, the first thing we did was remove all of the 70’s era lights from the ceiling, patch it, and repaint it white to restore the look that it was back in 1932. We installed a stainless steel floor here in the lobby. It’s a “floating floor” which means it’s not permanently attached to the terrazzo underneath. And it didn't damage the terrazzo in any way when we installed it so if for some reason in the future we had to remove this stainless steel floor, we can, and return it to its original historic condition.
We installed new high-efficiency LED lights along the walls and these allowed us to reduce energy usage by up to 80%. It also reduced maintenance costs because these bulbs last about 4-5 times longer than the bulbs we used to have installed in the ceilings. We replaced the existing 70’s era doors that were way beyond their useful life with new glass doors that let in a lot of light during the day and show off our new lobby at night. They also allow us to install a better security access system, which is better for both our tenants and their guests.
This building was originally engineered to be 15 stories tall, but it ended up only being 7. What that means for a technology user is that this building has much higher floor loads than a typical office building of its size. When you look around at the infrastructure of The Globe, and how it was engineered with its massive beams and columns, it’s clear there is no use a technology user would have that this building can’t accommodate.
So, we’re here on the roof of the Globe Building and a couple of unique features of this roof that are applicable to data center tenants. The first are these columns here. These stubs that come through the roof deck are actually the columns that support the entire building and go all the way down to the foundation. What we use them for is making these platforms here that support the dry coolers for our various data center tenants. This was designed to be the 8th floor of a 15 story building. It’s 8 to 9 inches of reinforced concrete with a floor load capacity of about 200 pounds per square foot. Essentially anything a datacenter tenant would want to put on a roof, this roof can support. We’ve got 70,000 square feet of roof space, so there is plenty of room for expansion.
The other thing here is the internet connection. You really can’t get a faster internet connection at the cost, than you can at here The Globe. The Tier 1 Fiber providers are already here, set up, and running inside the building. You are not sharing your internet connection with an entire neighborhood, instead, you are linked to the backbone of the internet because the fiber runs right inside The Globe.
Where I am standing right now is where the railroad tracks used to be when this building first opened as the main terminal for the railroad. Now it’s part of our underground parking garage. The fiber comes in through 3 corners of this building. From there, it goes from our NIV’s in each of the 3 corners, to one of several unused elevator shafts where it then travels up to all 7 floors of the building. These empty elevator shafts make it very cost-effective and simple to run this fiber vertically through the building.
We have over 350 parking spaces here in The Globe’s underground parking garage, 30 of which are reserved for visitors. This is a heated garage, it’s a secured garage, and it’s accessible 24 hours a day. In addition, we’ve got freight elevators that run into the parking garage. So, you can load up to 5,000 pounds of equipment right from your car or truck into the freight elevator and take it right upstairs to your suite.
This is the substation within The Globe, it’s actually inside the building. We have 3 main transformers here that power our datacenters. Each of them is a 2,500 KVA transformer putting out 3,000 amps at 480 volts, which is about 2 megawatts each. We have room here for another 3 transformers. These transformers are actually provided by Ameren UE, which is the electricity provider here in our region in St. Louis. The building is served with 2 redundant feeds from the main substation. This makes it very unlikely that we would have a power outage here at The Globe.
This building has a full set of freight docks to the North. This makes it extremely easy to move in. You can literally unload right there from a semi, on to a forklift, take it on to the freight elevator with a 7,000-pound capacity, and move it right into your suite.
The Globe Building is a short walk from the Edward Jones Dome, The America’s Center, and right around the corner from the Washington Avenue Technology Corridor. We have tenants who live literally right across the street on Washington Avenue and walk here to work every day. We are a short walk around the corner to bars, restaurants, the lofts, and hotels that make up the Washington Avenue Entertainment District.
Many people are initially attracted to The Globe Building for its lightning fast internet. But they soon find out that we also have large, open, loft-like floor plates with plenty of natural light. We can start tenants here at The Globe in as little as 1,000 square feet and because of the large floor plates, they can scale their space up to 1,500 feet 2,500 feet, 5,000, 10,000, up to 70,000 feet on a single floor.
So, we have a lot of very happy tenants here at The Globe, but we do have room for more. So call me or send me a note via our website globebuilding.com to schedule a tour. But you should really hurry, this space is going fast!
-Jeremy Salvatori, Building Manager