A former Intel chip fab in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is back on the market.
The listing comes less than a year after its former tenant, Swiss solar company Meyer Burger, scrapped its planned $400 million investment to turn the site into a solar cell factory.
According to the sales brochure, the site at 1615 Garden of the Gods Road is a 30.88-acre campus comprising 705,000 sq ft (65,496 sqm) of infrastructure and 120,000 sq ft (11,148 sqm) of cleanroom space, in addition to power redundancy, fiber access, and a secure perimeter.
Described as “ready for retrofit,” at present, the facility offers 70MW of existing power capacity, which can be expanded to more than 90MW, at the cost of 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour, subject to an arrangement with Colorado Springs Utilities.
The brochure also lists support for high-purity and hazardous materials, fire protection and suppression systems, and transport loading infrastructure. It also labels Colorado Springs as a “prime investment market for data centers, AI, and high-tech manufacturing,” citing competitive power costs, a pro-business environment, and a skilled local labor pool from “nearby STEM-focused universities.”
According to Marcus & Millichap, the real estate agent who has listed the property, the site is available for either sale or lease.
The site has had a number of owners during its almost 30-year history. Originally built in 1996 and purchased by Intel in 2000 for $45.5 million, the chipmaker operated at the site until December 2007, when it halted operations and listed the property for sale.
It was then bought in late 2009 by Industrial Realty Group for $15.1m in a deal that saw the two companies agree to equally share profits from the lease or sale of the primary manufacturing building for up to 10 years.
In June 2018, the site was sold again to 3G Venture II for $13m, which turned the facility into an industrial Bitcoin mining farm. The company used three of the four buildings on the site to mine Bitcoin, with the fans used to cool the compute infrastructure generating noise complaints from Colorado Springs residents.
In 2020, 3G Venture II faced foreclosure regarding a $6.5m loan it had taken out on the former Intel site, and a public auction was scheduled for the four buildings the company had purchased. In early December, 3G Venture II filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Meyer Burger then signed a $128m, 17-year lease for two of the utility buildings in January 2023, announcing plans to manufacture chips for solar modules at the site, but pulled out the following year, saying it would instead focus on building a module plant in Arizona and maintaining its existing German facility.
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