Developer Dave Sabey thinks the market has swung into “irrational pessimism,” and he’ll have none of that. It takes away from the fun.

Dave Sabey

“Last year at this time, Wall Street would fund anything. Now it won’t fund anything. They’re wrong again.”

Growth in digital technology remains the primary fuel for the national and local economy, regardless of what temporary market over-reaction may occur, Sabey said.

“This economy is only growing because of technology jobs. We’re in a technology hub, maybe one of the top three of those hubs in the country, and with the power situation in California, we could become the number one.”

Sabey Corp. rode technology hard the past couple of years as plans to construct a relatively small patch of industrial buildings in Tukwila blossomed instead into a mega-data center that is heading toward 2 million square feet in Tukwila and plans for more data centers around the country. Leasable data centers hardly existed three years ago.

The company binds Intergate East and West together under the name Intergate.Seattle (pronounced Intergate-dot-Seattle). When fully built out, the complex will total 2.14 million square feet on 72 acres.

One national investment banking house ventured that Intergate.Seattle’s size makes Sabey Corp. the world’s largest owner of leased data center space, but that couldn’t be confirmed. The firm estimated Sabey Corp.’s data center space equals 5.4 percent of the global supply of leasable data center space.

Last year, Sabey Corp. went looking for locations elsewhere in the country in order to go national with its data centers. So far the firm has purchased Denver and Los Angeles properties, which it calls Intergate.L.A. and Intergate.Denver, and is looking hard on the East Coast and in Sillicon Valley.

The first East Coast targets are Boston, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C. area. The company also has its eye on three other Southern California sites, said Sabey.

A shortage of electric power has hampered many data center proposals, particularly on the West Coast, but that doesn’t daunt Sabey. Developing data centers is competitive, just like any endeavor, Sabey contends, and he expects to win by locating the best sites, the best tenants and the best power supplies.

“It’s still about location,” he said.

Sabey predicts one day demand for power will decrease substantially, despite the proliferation of electronic devices, because humans will discover efficient “use of the electron.” The current crisis would end easily, he said, if companies simply switched to running fuel-powered back-up generators during daily peak-demand periods. Sabey, a one-time University of Washington middle linebacker, has had a hand in an array of businesses, including running a sportswear company and refurbishing a major mall in Spokane. This data center thing, he said, is as fun as any of them.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of fun stuff, a lot of neat companies,” Sabey said. “This is pretty cool. This is pegging my fun meter on high.”