By Chris Krestel, Chief Business Development Officer, MDI Access
As an architect, I look at an existing building differently than a broker or a buyer does. A real estate team sees square footage, location, and price. A data center team has to see floor loads, clear heights, power paths, fiber routes, and the space it takes to move a generator through the door.
That difference in perspective decides whether a conversion succeeds. The most valuable work in any adaptive reuse project happens before anyone signs a purchase agreement.
The five questions every candidate building has to answer
Industry panels and our own project history point to the same short list:
Can we get the power? Utility capacity and interconnection timelines decide feasibility before anything else. Panelists in a Data Center Frontier roundtable called power the first screening test.
Can the structure carry it? Racks, batteries, and cooling equipment weigh far more than office furniture or pallets. Rooftop mechanical loads on a data center can run several times what a typical warehouse roof was designed for.
Is there room overhead? Modern rack layouts, containment, and overhead distribution need clear height. Current guidance often calls for 14 feet or more.
How does the network get in? Diverse fiber entry points and proximity to carriers turn a building into a place networks want to be.
What will the jurisdiction allow? Many municipalities now have data-center-specific zoning rules, and a change of occupancy triggers new fire protection and code review.
A building that answers well on power and fiber can often solve the rest with good design.
Constraints are design problems, and design solves them
Some of MDI's best work came from buildings with tight constraints. In Denver, we converted a historic building into mission-critical space within a 9-foot ceiling height. In Chicago, we delivered nine single-floor deployments inside vertical, multi-tenant high-rises, where every piece of equipment had to fit through existing elevators and loading docks.
Those projects worked because the team understood the limits on day one and designed around them. A low ceiling shapes the cooling strategy. A floor load limit shapes where the battery room goes. Each constraint, found early, becomes a design decision instead of a change order.
Model the building before you commit
This is where technology changes the outcome. Laser scanning and Building Information Modeling (BIM) let us build an accurate digital model of an existing structure, then test equipment layouts, clearances, and load paths against it. Owners see what the building can support, in three dimensions, before capital is committed.
The same model carries forward. It guides design, coordinates the trades during construction, and hands off to the operations team as a facility database with every asset documented.
Start with an honest read
The right first step for any candidate building is a technical due diligence review, followed by a feasibility study that scopes the conversion and prices it out with a full capital budget. That sequence gives an owner a clear answer and a number they can take to their board.
If you are evaluating a building, we would be glad to help you read it.
Talk to an Advisor about a technical review of your building.