As workloads become increasingly challenging to locate in large markets like Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and Seattle, large deployments are flocking to a now-established city that offers low-cost renewable power and plenty of other benefits: Portland! As a result, the data center cluster in the western suburb of Hillsboro has rapidly grown into a global primary-sized market with plenty of further development underway and anyone from hyperscalers to social media firms searching for greater capacity.
The Portland story began like many other secondary markets across the United States years ago; tiny leases from various local businesses and slow compressing vacancy of twenty to 
twenty-five percent. Several concurrent changes began, with the implementation of several undersea cables linking the nearby Oregon coast to rapidly growing markets across Asia, with backhaul connectivity inland to data centers in Hillsboro. This spurred further construction of dense fiber rings linking several local facilities, providing peering opportunities not often found in what was previously a fringe market. This fiber then linked further up the coast to the once-larger market of Seattle and locally to the Portland carrier hotel downtown. As other markets in California and Washington became more expensive to acquire land and develop, the Hillsboro cluster became more attractive, and more extensive construction began.
The Power of Hydro
The days of twenty percent vacancy are permanently over, with the now highly tight city currently less than three percent empty and any large prospective buildings drawing interest for pre-leasing. Absorption in Portland tallied over 200 megawatts in 2022, leaving little contiguous capacity available for prospective tenants, many of whom are interested in the renewable energy available throughout Oregon thanks to plentiful hydropower. This leads to a much lower cost of power for dense deployments, perfect for those contemplating rollouts of artificial intelligence as part of their platforms. Additionally, Oregon offers no state sales tax as an alternative to state-level packages throughout the region with expiration dates.
Portland offers the right ingredients for the most significant deployments, from low-cost renewable energy and plenty of fiber to low taxes and international connectivity. As the city grows past 300 megawatts and potentially doubles in the coming years, expect a bright future and robust demand.
The EdgeConneX campus in Portland includes three purpose-built facilities and offers a secure, carrier-neutral environment for all deployments, with excellent access to the downtown core and beyond:
- Two Tier III designed facilities with available capacity
- 20MW POR03 facility under development and available 2025
- 20+ networks, including NWAX Exchange and Multiple Cloud On-Ramps
- AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft ExpressRoute, and Google Cloud Interconnect
To learn more, download the EdgeConneX Portland data sheet HERE.
Schedule a virtual tour: https://www.edgeconnex.com/virtual-tours/
To tour our Portland campus, please contact: capacity@edgeconnex.com
