Host Dime

For the Robins & Morton team working on the HostDime Data Center and Global Headquarters project in Orlando, Florida, the seven-story building is unlike anything they have worked on before.

That's not surprising, considering the structure includes the only enterprise Tier IV public datacenter in Central Florida. Tier IV is the highest level of reliability, built to be completely fault tolerant with multiple redundancies, providing 99.995% uptime and housed in a building designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds.

Then there's the seven-story, glass-enclosed office portion that will house HostDime's corporate headquarters and provide meeting space and accommodations for clients. It also features what HostDime CEO Manny Vivar describes as "the first floating sports court" – a cantilevered, glass-enclosed basketball half-court that will give players the feeling they're suspended high above I-4. The opposite side of the office portion, marked by angled pillars and an inverted pyramid curtain wall, will feature an open-air terrace.

Prominently visible to more than 200,000 vehicles a day traveling on I-4, the building's exterior design will stand out. But it's what will go on inside the data center that is most important, said Robins & Morton Superintendent JT Coleman. "What we're building is mission critical," he said. "That involves all the generator back-up and redundant systems that they have. The data center is designed to never lose power or cooling."

"The technical side of the data center is impressive," said Assistant Project Manager Al Ramirez. "The building will have seven transformers, seven chillers and four generators. That's for 100,000 square feet, which is a ton of power."

Despite all the design elements of the HostDime project, JT said Robins & Morton has experience in every aspect — but he's never seen so many different construction techniques packed into one building. The concrete work is a perfect example: the design includes four-story tilt-wall panels and cast-in-place columns and beams to support hollow-core floors for the data center. The office portion includes cast-in-place pan deck slabs with post tension beams and additional structural steel to help support the curtain wall and metal panel exterior.

"If you wanted one photo to illustrate construction, HostDime would be it," quipped Robins & Morton Preconstruction Division Manager Tristan Johannessen. "It has almost everything except bamboo."

HostDime’s team is also developing a special relationship with the community. The project is on the last undeveloped parcel along the I-4 Orlando metro corrido, in the community of Eatonville. Its construction kicked off an economic revitalization in the oldest Black municipality in the United States, while expanding the role of technology in Orlando's business growth.

HostDime will complete in 2023.