SubTropolis

Technology goes underground

By Leah Etling on May 12, 2016 in News

SubTropolis is the “World’s Largest Underground Business Complex,” developed by Kansas City Chiefs owner and real estate developer Lamar Hunt. The excavated mine, located in Kansas City, Mo., is approximately the size of 140 football fields.

The underground city, 160 feet beneath the earth, was created through the mining of a 270-million-year-old limestone deposit which began in the 1940s. It wasn’t until 1960 that the owners realized they had a gigantic area they could rent, sell and lease for business operations. Now, 14 million square feet of the 55 million square-foot cave is an industrial park with illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track.

SubTropolis is home to over 50 national, international and local companies in the fields of e-commerce, automotive and storage industry. Approximately 1,700 employees work under the “World’s Largest Green Roof,” with the facility storing everything from postal stamps to the original film reels of Gone With the Wind. Currently more than 6 million square feet is occupied with 8 million more to move into.

The eco-friendly underground campus also houses a state-of-the-art data center; SubTropolis Technology Center. STC, an underground data center carved out of 18,000 to 24,000 pounds per square inch solid limestone which is six time stronger than concrete, provides a level of security and strength unmatched by any other traditional data center facility.

Armed security, 24x7x365 patrols, monitoring, key card, gated barriers and biometric readers make the technology center an indestructible and impenetrable fortress. STC also has a six-acre equipment yard on the exterior surface for future infrastructure.

SubTropolis Technology Center has the advantage of space, with millions of square feet available for IT and raised floor area. The facility provides customers with data center suites ranging from 5,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet, with 16 inch clear ceiling heights throughout. It provides network-neutral access to some of the world’s most advanced telecommunications networks. STC clients have direct access to local, national, wireless, private, public, and dark fiber networks and the scale and scope of network choices offered by the data center lowers costs and increases price and performance options for its clients.

It uses the latest data center facility design standards and best practices; designed for 30 megawatts/37.5MVA, 135-watts per square foot of raised floor. The data center has N+1 redundant power systems with concurrent maintainability, multiple 750 KVA UPS and 2500 kW diesel generators to ensure continuity of service. The facility is fed by redundant feeds from two diverse substations. The N+1 redundant UPS system, with instantaneous failover, is always protecting the power load. STC is being designed with a P.U.E. of less than 1.5.

LightEdge Solutions, a premier cloud computing, colocation and consulting company, is the anchor tenant for STC. The company offers dynamic end-to-end network, colocation and IT cloud solutions, providing businesses with reliable access to Fortune 100-level infrastructure that quickly adapts and scales to meet changing business requirements. The facilities cool climate helped attract LightEdge inside the Hunt Midwest ‘cave’ in April 2014.

Apart from the businesses, the metropolis beneath Kansas City annually hosts 10K and 5K races that are part of The Groundhog Run, which have taken place for the past 33 years.