What’s This Building on Helena Avenue?

On Helena Avenue, behind Helena Avenue Bakery and The Lark, there’s an unmarked building next to the train tracks. What is it? —D.

The trapezoidal building at 122 Helena Avenue is owned by Level 3 Communications, which was sold to CenturyLink, which was subsequently renamed Lumen Technologies, or simply Lumen, based in Monroe, Louisiana. Not to be confused with Lumon, the fictional company in Severance, or Lumen Wines, Lumen describes its mission thus: “From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to our edge cloud, security, managed service, and digital platform capabilities, we meet our customers’ needs today and as they build for tomorrow.”

Lumen uses 122 Helena Avenue as a data center. To borrow a description from Cisco, a data center is “a physical facility that organizations use to house their critical applications and data. A data center’s design is based on a network of computing and storage resources that enable the delivery of shared applications and data. The key components of a data center design include routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application-delivery controllers.” The inside probably looks like this.

UPDATE: “The main fiber optic cable that runs the internet through coastal California runs buried beneath the railroad tracks here, just adjacent to this building,” commented @ideafarm on Instagram. “And that’s why the server farm folks are in this building. Connectivity is faster when directly connected.”

Got a question you’d like investigated? Email [email protected] or text 917-209-6473.

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