When I first moved to Colorado, I was fascinated and amused, sometimes twice per day on the school run, I’d pass Tape and Disk(or was it disc?) Dr. The roads led to nothing. and empty site, full of scrub grass and weeds. I’d always assumed it was a failed tax break development scheme. This seemed particularly likely as there is a large multi-property multi-family housing development across the street.
I was surprised recently on a Wednesday morning ride when one of the guys I was riding with declared he used to work at StorageTek there. I was fascinated. Although I remember IBM had a plant here that developed laser printers, but I knew that location was sold to Lexmark.
Rather than the roads leading to an undeveloped location, the location had at one time been a thriving location. Some poking around on the Denver Business Journal website revealed the story, and google maps had some pictures of the site in better days and from I36 you can even see some of the buildings. The picture below is a 2008 aerial picture of the site. Disk Dr is the road onto the site in the upper right, and Tape Dr on the lower right.
From the Denver Business Journal
- Sun completes StorageTek acquisition(Sept. 2005)
- Martin leaves impressive legacy at StorageTek(Oct. 2005)
- Secrecy shrouds buyer of StorageTek site(Jan 2008)
- ConocoPhillips to build campus on former StorageTek site in Louisville(Feb 2008)
- Phillips 66 pulls the plug on Louisville energy campus(Oct. 2012)
Asides from questions about the future of the site, the only real question is when did the site transfer between Louisville and Broomfield cities, see pictures above.
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It was not long after the Sun acquisition. Storagetek disk R&D and software development were there. I believe Nigel Dessau was somehow involved in that after he left IBM.
FWIW, the printer plant was in Boulder, colocated with the Ricoh complex at 6100 sw Diagonal Hwy (home of all service tapes).
Indeed, if you read through the links, Nigel was head of the tape division. Nigel is of course a personal friend. I’ve reached out to him for updates. Thanks for the observations David.
“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
My friend, and programming genius, John Hartmann from Copenhagen always used to muse, you can’t beat the bandwidth of a jumbo jet.
I worked there 1986-88 as a “Moving Man”, mostly going to all seven buildings and moving office furniture or equipment, so I got to see just about all of the things going on at that time. A big thing can be seen in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Eraser” when Vanessa Williams uses the Aspen (the code name when I worked there was “Iceberg”, or vice versa, it’s been 32 years!) Tape Drive Silo to obtain information. I saw all the components in tests, moved many of them, and even moved a full sized model to Boulder and Nederland for promotional filming. My Dad worked in Remote Diagnostics for ages too and retired just before Sun took over. Back in it’s heyday STC (earler STK) sure was a jumping place!
Thanks so much Terry. I remember seeing an STK tape library at one of the UK Banks I worked for IBM, they were monsters.
Reblogged this on Adventures in systems land.
I left IBM on April 1st 2015 – bonus got paid at end of q1. I think i took month off and then started at STK. Sun had been looking at STK but my sense was the deal was off when I joined as CMO. Pat Martin called me into his office 6 weeks later to told me the business had been sold. It took 6 months to close.
Why did Sun buy STK? My sense is they swapped Cash for Profit. The problem was that Sun was pretty much doomed by then. That’s another story.