By Bob Heiderscheidt, President and CEO, MDI Access
When I founded MDI Access in 2001, much of our work happened inside buildings that were never meant to hold data centers. Switch rooms, central offices, and colocation suites went into whatever space the network needed, close to the people and businesses it served. Adaptive reuse was simply how the industry grew.
The last decade pulled the market toward the other extreme. Hyperscale campuses rose on open land, and for that scale, building new usually made sense. Now the pendulum is swinging back, and owners who understand why will find opportunity sitting in their existing portfolios.
Power is the new scarcity, and some buildings already have it
Every developer today is chasing the same thing: energized capacity. Utility interconnection queues stretch for years in many markets, and switchgear, transformers, and generators carry long lead times. A building that already has substantial service, a nearby substation, or a utility relationship in place starts years ahead of a greenfield parcel.
Chicago offers a clear example. The former Cboe headquarters at 400 S. LaSalle traded for $40 million in 2025, more than three times its 2024 purchase price, after its prior owners secured additional power and began pre-conversion work. The buyer plans a 33MW data center. As Morgan Lewis noted in its analysis of the deal, power access is the gating item, and a vacant office with secured power becomes a data center candidate with real value.
Demand is moving closer to people
AI inference, the work of answering queries and running applications in real time, is expected to grow into the majority of AI demand by the end of the decade. Inference rewards proximity. Industry executives interviewed by Bisnow expect strong demand for last-mile facilities measured in dozens of megawatts, built near population centers instead of hundreds of miles away.
That is exactly where existing buildings sit. Former industrial, telecom, and office properties inside metro areas already connect to dense fiber and urban power. DCD has highlighted Union Station in South Bend, Indiana, a former passenger rail hub that now serves as a regional interconnection site with more than 20 network providers. The building's location became its biggest asset.
Speed to market favors a head start
Reusing a shell, a structure, and an existing utility connection can shorten the path to occupancy. One contractor's 2026 cost analysis puts conversions 6 to 12 months faster to power-on than comparable new builds. For an owner, those months translate directly into earlier revenue.
Where the opportunity is today
The best candidates share a few traits: meaningful power at or near the site, fiber access, sound structure, and a market with demand for edge, enterprise, or colocation capacity. Warehouses, manufacturing plants, printing facilities, central offices, and some office buildings all qualify under the right conditions.
The key word is conditions. Not every building makes the cut, and the ones that do reward a careful evaluation up front. That is where an independent advisor earns its keep: judging the building against your requirements, not against what someone wants to sell or build.
MDI has spent more than three decades doing this work, from a REIT-owned shell phased to 3MW in Milwaukee to nine single-floor deployments inside Chicago high-rises. If you own a building, or are evaluating one, the first question is simple: what could it become?
Talk to an Advisor about your building's potential.