Preliminary plans for a data center campus in DeKalb, Illinois, have been approved.
The DeKalb Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously in favor of the project on July 15, reports Shaw Local News Network.
The data center campus will be located on 132 acres of land at Peace and Guler roads.
Proposed by Karis Acquisitions, an end user has yet to be shared. Karis Acquisition is part of Karis Capital, an Illinois-based private equity firm specializing in commercial real estate.
The concept plan is for seven two-story data center buildings, each spanning 250,000 sq ft (23,226 sqm). In addition, ComEd hopes to construct a 20-acre substation on the site to provide power to the campus and other portions of the region.
Attorney Matt Norton, speaking on behalf of Karis Acquisition, said at the July 15 meeting: "Data centers are an enumerated permitted use in several of the industrial districts already. We believe it’s appropriate to add that permitted use to this portion of the [Planned Development-Industrial] district. The existing uses around us are largely industrial or vacant land that is planned in the [Comprehensive] Plan for industrial.”
The project is expected to bring around 75 to 100 new jobs per building.
The City Council is set to host a public hearing regarding the development on July 22.
If the proposal is approved, it would be DeKalb's second data center campus.
The proposed campus is nearby to an existing Meta data center campus launched in November 2023 following three years of construction, as well as works currently underway for a Kraft Heinz distribution center.
According to City Planner Dan Olson, the new campus would be designed to be cohesive with these existing developments.
Illinois' biggest data center market is around Chicago.
The Chicago area is one of the largest data center markets in North America, but the availability of server space is low. According to a report from Newmark released earlier this month, data center inventory in the region has increased 35 percent over the last five years, but availability is running at just 1.6 percent.
CyrusOne and Microsoft are both developing major campuses in the Chicago area.
