Following a contentious, roughly four-hour meeting Tuesday at which numerous residents aired their concerns about the proposal, the Yorkville City Council has given the green light to another data center project.
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On Tuesday, the City Council approved annexation, rezoning, a Planned Unit Development, or PUD, plan and development and utility and infrastructure agreements for Project Steel, a proposed 540-acre data center campus which is being brought forward by Prologis, L.P.
The project is slated to have 16 buildings, and is located generally south of Galena Road and east of Eldamain Road — just south of the already-approved Project Cardinal data center campus.
The council, however, also opted on Tuesday to table a rezoning measure for another proposed data center site nearby.
Yorkville has become a sort of hub for data center projects, in part due to the area’s proximity to a ComEd substation. Several projects at varying stages of approval are under consideration in Yorkville, forming what may one day be a sort of corridor of data center campuses in the northeast quadrant of Eldamain Road and Route 34.
Earlier this month, the City Council OK’d measures for a roughly 1,000-acre data center campus that has also drawn the ire of numerous area residents.
That project, called Project Cardinal, has a development site that is just over 1,000 acres in the northwest corner of Yorkville on the border with Sugar Grove, generally located northwest of Route 47 and Galena Road, south of Baseline Road and east of Ashe Road. There would be a total of 14 data center buildings at the site, along with two electrical substations, a utility switchyard and stormwater detention basins, according to plans.
But with these proposed developments has come significant resident opposition, with concerns ranging from residents’ health to noise to energy usage and costs. An online petition, for example, seeking to stop both Project Steel and Project Cardinal has garnered more than 4,500 signatures since it began circulating.
As for the project approved Tuesday, Krysti Barksdale-Noble, the city’s community development director, indicated at the meeting that some changes have been made to Project Steel since it was last presented to the council.
The biggest change to the project’s plans, Barksdale-Noble said, has to do with a planned substation being reconfigured into two substations. That change is requiring a reduction in the number of planned buildings from 18 to 16, which is also resulting in increased distance between the nearest data center and residents living to the southeast.
A representative from Prologis confirmed that the number of generators and chillers will remain the same, so the noise study results for the project would not change.
The developer for Project Steel also plans to give the city $40 million in impact fees in connection with the project. Of that, $30 million is slated to go to Yorkville School District 115 for facilities projects, City Administrator Bart Olson said at the meeting.
Olson also confirmed that generator testing for the project can only be done on non-holiday weekdays, and said Prologis estimated needing to conduct testing on each generator for around 30 minutes per month. He also said the project is restricted to an average water usage of 25,000 gallons per day, with a maximum limit of 42,500 gallons in a day.
The other proposal considered at Tuesday’s meeting was to rezone a portion of land in the same area for a potential data center in the future. The petition was brought forward by Matt Gilbert of Chicago-based Green Door Capital, who presented the rezoning petition on behalf of Yorkville Nexus V LLC, the property owner.
That proposal, sometimes referred to as the Meyer project, is for a portion of land that, according to a map from the city, sits just south of Project Steel and directly north of a possible CyrusOne data center campus that has been proposed in the area. Another CyrusOne site was previously approved in the area in 2024. CyrusOne also has a data center property nearby on Aurora’s far East Side.
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The rezoning request for the project failed to secure a positive recommendation from Yorkville’s Planning and Zoning Commission in January, but the matter was ultimately brought forward to the council on Tuesday with some changes. Namely, the petitioner has rescinded an original request to rezone the eastern parcel, totaling around 37 acres, of the project from a multi-family residential designation to agricultural.
The request brought forward for approval by the council on Tuesday was to rezone the two western parcels, totaling around 91 acres, from multi-family residential to a manufacturing designation.
Barksdale-Noble indicated that the petitioner for that project has agreed to include a 1,100-foot setback from the east of the project, closest to nearby residential properties. She also indicated that the petitioner intends to donate the eastern 37 acres of the property to the city to ensure it will remain open space, and has promised to pay impact fees in the amount of about $10 million.
A representative from JLL, who is consulting for Green Door on the project, emphasized that Green Door already owns the land, as well as the developer’s promise not to develop a total of 48 acres of the property.
Olson noted that the petitioner for this project is currently only seeking rezoning at this point, but would plan to seek further approvals related to a future data center campus at a later date.
At the meeting, more than two dozen individuals addressed the city’s data center proposals, with the majority in opposition, citing concerns about things like noise, water usage, resident health and the city’s transparency with regards to the proposed data center projects.
The majority of those who spoke in favor of Yorkville’s planned data centers were individuals involved in the trades, pointing to the possibility of the data centers generating local jobs.
Ultimately, the approvals considered Tuesday for Project Steel — on annexation, rezoning of the property, a Planned Unit Development agreement, and the utility and infrastructure and development agreements — were all approved. They received a positive vote from all City Council members except for Rusty Corneils, who voted against them, and Rusty Hyett, who was absent.
Olson said that, following these approvals, Project Steel can essentially go to construction, but will still need to do things like close on the property, complete the required community donations and meet all the agreed upon infrastructure obligations.
The Meyer project, however, did not get approval on Tuesday. At the meeting, Ald. Chris Funkhouser moved to table the matter because of the changes to the project discussed at the meeting. The move to table was supported by all of the City Council members present at the meeting except for Craig Soling and Daniel Transier.