CBRE announced that Christopher Fudacz has been promoted to lead its data center specialty practice for Valuation and Advisory Services (VAS).

Based in Chicago, Fudacz will coordinate a team of valuation and advisory specialists across the U.S with the objective to develop and expand the platform nationally. The data centers team adds to an extensive service offering for VAS that includes practice groups for apartments, auto dealerships, healthcare/seniors housing, hotels, golf & leisure, land/agribusiness/natural resource, malls, manufactured housing, retail, and student housing.

“This appointment is part of our continued strengthening of dedicated practice groups with deep experience in a broad range of property types. These teams provide expert market and sector experience that is focused on the specific needs of clients, providing a range of services that is unique in our industry,” said Richard West, executive managing director of valuation practice groups, CBRE.

“Chris has natural leadership qualities with a unique understanding of how power and fiber availability, infrastructure resiliency, geographic location, and economic incentives, can impact the values of this specialized property type,” added West.

Prior to this role, Fudacz spent the past five years as the East-Central lead for CBRE VAS. He has completed assignments on various types of data centers, including mission critical, disaster recovery data centers, colocation facilities and carrier hotels on behalf of data center operators, enterprise users and various financial institutions.

North American data center investment volume totaled more than $12 billion in 2018, inclusive of single-asset, portfolio and entity-level transactions, according to recent CBRE research. Capital availability remained abundant throughout the year, with 33% of total investment volume focused on single-asset and portfolio transactions versus 27% in 2017.