Technology fortress awaiting new tenant

Jan 1, 2001 12:00 PM, RANDY SOUTHERLAND

Military Highway cuts a busy swath through Boca Raton, Fla. The corporate campuses of high-tech industrial companies such as Siemens and Sony line both sides of the highway. Traffic moves quickly, and few motorists realize that the dense stand of trees providing a lush reprieve from the monotony of rows of office buildings also conceals another corporate outpost. Built by computer pioneer IBM two decades ago, the property was originally conceived as the "mission-critical" home for research and development of the personal computer. Executives decided that the work was so important they needed a facility that could operate under the most extreme conditions. Neither power outages, cut cable or extremes of nature could interfere with the activities taking place at what came to be known as TechCenter 051.

"IBM designed the building to withstand the force of a hurricane," says Michael Lipof, one of two building engineers who help maintain TechCenter on a round-the-clock basis.

No signs mark its presence, and for years entrance has been reserved for a select few with the right clearance. The building is concealed, and the only indication of its presence is a small sign on a side street. A narrow road cuts a path through the trees past a formidable glass-enclosed guard shack.

Constructed of the same white concrete as so many other structures in this corporate haven, the squat, single-story building is far from ordinary. The facility's pre-cast concrete walls are designed not only to be pleasing to the eye, but also to withstand the impact of most modern vehicles trying to ram their way into the building.

"It's a combination of both the physical structure as well as the infrastructure," explains Cliff Stein, president of Miami-based Savitar Realty, the building's owner. "In this building they wanted to keep everything top secret and protect it from espionage and theft of trade secrets and ideas. They also wanted to use it for all critical missions in the years to come."

Within this 150,000-sq.-ft. structure, IBM conducted some of the pioneering work in the field of computers, including the development of the original 5 1/4-inch floppy disk and some of the early work in robotics. In addition, the building served as the headquarters for the company's worldwide monitoring of Y2K activities at the dawning of the year 2000.

Those activities are now largely concluded, and the company has decided to relocate its operations elsewhere. As a result, the unique building is on the market. While the sort of history-making work IBM conducted here may not be repeated, its owners believe they can market the building to another company that needs an innovative, high-tech building.

"Now I've got this very peculiar building on my hands that I'm sure will be attractive to those people who are in either telecommunications or data storage - any industry in which infrastructure, protection, and fortification are of paramount importance," says Stein.

To ensure a place where its work could go undisturbed, IBM first purchased 550 acres in Boca Raton just off the Interstate Highway. Eventually 16 acres were developed for the facility, which - unlike its neighbors - was set back from the road behind a stand of trees.

"The conclusion you draw is that this is all land that's not being used," explains Stein. "You would never know it, but behind the 110 feet of thick dense trees that surround this building is a huge campus. To get there you don't even have access off the main road. Normally you see the entrance off the road, but here all you see is the side street. You cross a canal - which we call the moat - and as soon as you get to the other side, there's a bulletproof glass bunker that used to be manned by armed guards."

Previously, a series of cameras and gates carefully monitored and controlled access to the building. The interior and exterior cameras record all activity in a central control room. In addition, the building is monitored at an undisclosed location off-site.

"For employees, there's a road that leads through the woods and is only open during rush hour," says Stein. "It circles back and goes into that main street - without any signs. There's a guard there and those gates are closed after rush hour. That way people have access from this main building to the main road without having to go through the main entrance."

Employees wear a mag-stripe badge that grants access through the card readers that guard the doors to the facility. Deep within the recesses of the building, some high-security areas require biometric access. What occurs there is still closely guarded by IBM, which remains closed-mouthed about both the facility and its security operations. These areas are off-limits to visitors even when that visitor is the building's owner, Cliff Stein.

Operations at TechCenter 051 include serving as a back- up center for many of the nation's major airlines and several international corporations. Row after row of high-tech computers hum ceaselessly in high-security "clean rooms" to ensure that data vital to the health of business is never lost and will be available even during a disaster.

In addition, a cadre of workers also man phone lines in a call center to support IBM's various proprietary programs.

The building itself was constructed with 24-in., heavy-loading, concrete and steel-reinforced floors complemented by 12-in.-thick ceilings. During construction, redundancy was the by-word of this facility.

"Redundancy is the key to this whole conception by IBM," says Stein. "They have four different sources of electrical power - huge quantities of power. One source is a direct feed from the power station. This is 2000 amps going into the building. It also has the capacity of 7500 KVA (kilovolt amps) that is a direct, underground feed. They also feed from another side of the building into the direct, normal city grid for Boca Raton."

In addition, IBM maintained an on-site generator with a 20,000-gallon diesel fuel tank.

"And if all of those go down, they have a line that goes to a 10 mega-watt generator that was later sold to a maintenance company," says Stein. "Now it's available by subscription only. Maybe it's a little overkill, but it's there if we need it. In the past, when IBM was working on heavy critical missions, they trucked in additional generators that plug right into the facility."

To keep the building up and running, it is also surrounded by two "self-healing" SONAT rings. They allow communications to continue by moving signals in a different direction in case of a line being cut.

"It's also served by two separate central offices of BellSouth," explains Stein. "If one central office goes down, there is another office in an entirely different location. If there's a cut in a line, for whatever reason, the two twin multi-directional SONAT rings ensure that they will always have phone service. There are 1,600 pairs of copper wires that come into this building."

The building also has twin-cooling towers designed to ensure that the building's clean rooms are constantly maintained at the perfect temperature for the computers.

"The design of the building was very well thought out," says Lipof. "The indoor air quality far exceeds quality regulations."

In addition, as an added security measure, air vents are located on the roof - 20 feet above the ground - and can only be accessed from a passage within the building.

Recently, as IBM has scaled back its own activity - a third of the 150,000 sq. ft. has been vacated - the level of security has been relaxed as well. An armed guard no longer occupies the fortified guardhouse at the side entrance. Visitors who can find the side road can now travel unimpeded all the way up the narrow path to the building itself, where a sentry sits behind a bulletproof glass cage. That level of security will also soon fade away as well, as the company prepares to finally exit the facility next summer. Within the building, many of the card readers are being removed and workers come and go more easily, according to Lipof.

Even as its creators leave it behind, TechCenter 051 seems designed to find new life with a new tenant who can make use of a building that was designed to stand against nearly anything nature or man might throw at it.

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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