MCKINLEY PARK — The data center operators who plan to occupy the former Sun-Times printing plant will get a $11.4 million property tax break.
The City Council last week approved the property tax break that will make way for Kansas-based Quality Technology Services to redevelop the shuttered plant at 2800 S. Ashland Ave. into a massive data storage facility.
In a deal that closed in July, the company bought the building for $18 million.
The rapidly expanding data warehousing and storage provider will rehab the 317,000-square-foot building into a facility that houses data servers and other equipment to store, back up and transmit vast amounts of digital information.
The company’s $119 million first phase will be followed by later construction at the 29-acre site, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s press office. The first phase will create up to 20 permanent jobs.
“Investments like the one QTS is making to build a mega data center here are the reason that Chicago will be a technology and data capital for the 21st Century,” Emanuel said.
The Southwest Side building has been vacant since 2011, when the Sun-Times closed the printing facility and axed 400 jobs. The Sun-Times is now printed at the Tribune's Freedom Center plant in West Town.
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