‘Odd thing out’: Neighbors upset about proposed data center development in Naperville

Existing infrastructure attracted a data center developer to roughly 40 acres of vacant land within Naperville’s Interstate 88 corridor.

Karis Critical has proposed a pair of data centers near Naperville and Warrenville roads. A glass-and-steel building, designed years ago for Lucent Technologies, formerly occupied the site. There's “quite a bit of fiber optic cable” tied to the original Lucent campus, Karis CIO Brett Rogers said.

“So much of the public discourse around data centers is tied to AI data centers or hyperscale cloud data centers, very, very large facilities,” he said. “What we're proposing we'd call a colocation data center or a metro data center. These tend to be a little bit smaller, tend to be highly networked, and that's kind of why we like this site so much.”

The project, however, has sparked opposition among residents of recently constructed townhouses in Naper Commons and more established neighborhoods who say a data center campus belongs in a heavier industrial area.

“We understand data centers are essential hubs of the digital world. However, their operation often comes with a number of costs,” said Charles Desmond, who lives in Naper Commons.

Opponents have voiced concerns about power consumption, water use, noise and the use and testing of backup generators. They’re worried about residential property values and local forest preserves. If fully developed, the two proposed data center buildings would total roughly 422,500 square feet.

“Adding it all up, who wants to live that close to a data center campus? No one, certainly no one near this proposed site,” said Lori Melhart, who lives in Danada Woods.

Each of the data centers is planned at 36 megawatts, or 72 megawatts total, of capacity.

Karis proposes developing the data center campus in phases, starting with a building in the southwest portion of the site. The eastern data center and a utility substation would be constructed in the future, depending on the availability of necessary utility infrastructure, said Sara Kopinski, who’s part of the city’s planning services team.

Phase 1 of the development can be adequately served by public utilities and services, “including sufficient capacity available on the city's electric infrastructure,” she said. As a result, city staff recommend approval of Phase 1, subject to a list of conditions.

However, staff recommend the developer submit a new conditional use application for Phase 2 at a future date — once adequate electrical power is available and any unforeseen issues that may arise with Phase 1 have been addressed.

A public hearing is expected to continue Oct. 15.

The city is in the process of securing a third-party sound engineer to review the developer’s noise study, verify the data center campus will operate in compliance with city regulations and determine if any additional improvements are recommended to mitigate potential noise impacts, Kopinski said last week.

It’s likely to be a multi-tenanted facility, Rogers said. Karis expects banks, insurance agencies and other groups that maintain their own IT infrastructure in the space. He also cited examples of ecosystem players that are tangential to the industry.

“And then, of course, we do expect hyperscale users, although very different than what we would talk about when you're thinking about a cloud campus or an AI campus,” he said. “These are more network-intensive workloads that manage and route traffic to those core assets.”

The electric utility tax revenue alone is estimated to range from about $1,868,900 to $3,058,100 annually at build-out, according to a fiscal impact report by Gruen Gruen + Associates submitted to the city.

The development is “absolutely consistent with the historic research and development associated with telecommunications that’s been happening on the campus for the last 60 years,” Russ Whitaker, an attorney for Karis, has said.

But Fairmeadow resident Jen Banowetz says the area has evolved into an oasis.

“Look at Google Maps,” she said. “You'll see all the greenery, you'll see all the neighborhoods, you'll see all the businesses, and a data center is the odd thing out.”