Cheap Data Center Space, Shuttered Retailers

MSNBC.com/AP has an article about empty big retail space.  The interesting thing about these big retail spaces, is they are built like warehouses.  Seems like a good space to put in containerized data centers as long as you can get the power and network infrastructure in place.

‘Ghostboxes’ haunt communities across U.S.

As big retailers go under, consolidate, blight is monument to lost jobs

With the recent spate of bankruptcies and store closures, including Circuit City and Linens ’N Things, more abandoned buildings like this Sportsman's Warehouse in Allen Park, Mich., will be added to a struggling commercial real estate market.

View related photos

Carlos Osorio / AP

updated 2:48 p.m. PT, Mon., July 6, 2009

BISMARCK, N.D. - Hundreds of anxious shoppers watched as city officials used power saws to cut 2-by-4s during Home Depot Inc.’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for its 102,700-square-foot building center in Bismarck. Less than three years later, the home improvement retailer shuttered the underperforming store, leaving a big orange empty eyesore on the outskirts of town.

The building, sitting derelict and silent on acres of asphalt, is now listed for sale at $10.5 million. But there’s been little interest in the near windowless warehouse-like building that occupies a lot the size of a dozen football fields.

Or maybe you could even use the space for a content delivery network in strategy locations.