The company whose plans to build a data center in Naperville were rejected in January is eyeing a new location in the Interstate 88 corridor for possible development.
According to an internal city memo obtained by the Naperville Sun, Karis is considering the purchase of the 168-acre INEOS property, formerly the BP campus, on which to build a data center and an advanced manufacturing hub at 150 W. Warrenville Road.
If plans were to move forward, the proposed data center would be the same size as the one previously proposed for the Nokia property at 1960 Lucent Lane off the I-88 corridor, the memo said. In addition to data centers, Karis is known for building cold storage facilities, industrial buildings and advanced manufacturing facilities.
Mayor Scott Wehrli, City Manager Doug Krieger and representatives for Naperville Development Partnership and JLL, the company listing the property, were present at a May meeting to be briefed on the Karis’ concept, according to the May 29 memo.
Karis spokesperson Patrick Skarr said the company requested the meeting, which was facilitated by the Naperville partnership, but emphasized there is no finalized plan.
“We have no pending proposal for the 168-acre campus,” Skarr said. “We’ve made no decision about whether to pursue an investment in the corridor or not … we still are not the owner of the property. We don’t have rights to proposing anything on the property. We’re just exploring it.”
If the company were to move forward, the idea would be for the site to provide space for a number of different tenants, he said.
“There’s really a resurgence of manufacturing and advanced manufacturing occurring in the country,” Skarr said, noting that the property’s location in Naperville makes it attractive for such a development. “It’s a great place to be. It’s got a great people characteristic in terms of the broader workforce of the Chicago metro, and it has a very reliable utility that could service it.”
At full buildout, the property could support about 1.5 million square feet of advanced manufacturing facility space and potentially could bring 1,000 to 1,500 new jobs to the city, he said.
The data center would be a dedicated, stand-alone facility with a maximum capacity of somewhere between 100,000 to 125,000 square feet, he said.
Wehrli said the purpose of the meeting was to listen to the developer’s ideas and provide some feedback.
“We were bullish on the potential opportunity for some advanced manufacturing to basically be the identified use for the site,” he said. “… It falls within the framework of some of the desirable things that we believe the corridor could be a prime candidate for.”
That said, the data center component was viewed less favorably based on general negative community sentiment, Wehrli said.
“Obviously, we saw that in the last proposal and I think anything that gets promoted in that space is going to bear a high degree of attention,” he said.
When asked about where Karis stands with its project proposal currently, Skarr said “everything is on the table from our perspective,” but they are taking the feedback from the city into consideration.
“We’re still at this stage as we’re developing our concepts and making an evaluation as to whether or not we want to even pursue a project here,” he said. “We’ve taken that feedback into consideration. I would know a lot of advanced manufacturing operations do have some form of more intensive on-site computing.”
Since the site is contaminated due to prior use by the U.S. Army and BP Amoco, it would also take some time clean it up, the memo said.
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Skarr said he does not know how long remediation would take. He also noted there are buildings on the site that would need to be demolished.
The INEOS property is the largest site within the corridor currently for sale, Wehrli said. A JLL representative said it was listed for sale “well over a year ago,” and there have not been many offers.
“When you had thousands of employees and all those buildings that were there for years, it had a huge impact on our city,” Wehrli said. “And now that it sits vacant, I mean, trying to replenish that and reactivate that site, it’s important, because growing our commercial investment in our city is the only way we can keep our city affordable for our residents.”
Naperville Development Partnership President Monica Conners, who attended the meeting, described it as “a logical step” in the development process. The partnership is not actively working to bring data centers to Naperville, she said, but focused on a number of target industries identified in a study last year as suitable for the corridor.
Those industries include agricultural/food tech and production, financial tech, biotech, energy, pharmaceuticals, and quantum and advanced manufacturing.