‘Industry has been at this site’: Naperville panel endorses data center plans
After a series of marathon meetings packed with project opponents, Naperville’s plan commission has recommended approval of a controversial proposal to build a data center on the north side of the city.
Karis Critical is under contract to acquire roughly 40 acres near Naperville and Warrenville roads. The developer originally proposed two data center buildings on the site, but reduced the scale of the plan to one 36-megawatt facility.
Environmental advocates and neighbors have raised myriad concerns about noise, the use of backup diesel generators, property values and power consumption.
Still, the data center development has received the commission’s endorsement with an 8-1 vote. The city council gets the final say.
The project has faced “intense scrutiny,” said Whitney Robbins, chair of the plan commission.
“This could be the gold standard for other communities,” she said.
As part of its “stewardship pledge,” Karis will invest at least $250 million in the data center. The developer plans to enroll in the city’s green energy certificate program to purchase renewable energy certificates, or RECs, “offsetting 100% of the leasable IT load,” Russ Whitaker, the developer’s attorney, said.
“This is not a hyper-scale center. I like the ban on crypto and AI,” said Allison Longenbaugh, another plan commissioner and a former city councilwoman.
Residents of recently constructed townhouses in Naper Commons and more established neighborhoods insist that a data center campus belongs in a heavier industrial area, not near their families. Others have been worried about the use of large quantities of electricity.
“While Karis has reduced their initial request by half, the new 36-megawatt load is still more than 10% of Naperville's peak demand,” said Ted Bourlard, a member of the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force, or NEST, leadership team.
The group has also urged the city to adopt a six-month moratorium on the approval or permitting of data centers. In Aurora, several residents spoke out about data center noise before the city council passed a moratorium. Generally, the largest noise emitters are diesel emergency power generators and HVAC chiller systems, according to a city presentation.
“They had data centers zoned as warehouses. They didn't have any delay. They didn't have this process when they approved those data centers,” Robbins said. “And so for me, this has been, of sorts, a moratorium.”
The Naperville property is located along the city's I-88/Diehl Road corridor — long considered its “Innovation Corridor.” Longenbaugh said there are thousands of “semis that go by the Naperville exit every day.”
“And that produces quite a lot of diesel pollution already, and so the thing is … industry has been at this site since the 1960s,” she said.
Whitaker acknowledged there has been some residential intrusion into the corridor. “But, I think the corridor has to evolve,” he said.
Whitaker said a study found there is sufficient capacity in the Indian Hill substation to serve the data center at a 36-megawatt IT load.
“While some reinforcements to the Naperville infrastructure will be required, Karis is committed to paying 100% of those improvement costs necessary to serve the project,” he said.
Commissioner Courtney Naumes, the lone “no” vote, noted the general area includes neighborhoods, parks, forest preserves and low-intensity commercial use.
One major question mark is the future of the city’s relationship with the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency.
“Let's start with a foundational question of who's going to supply our energy for this,” City Councilman Ian Holzhauer said last month. “That's not at all clear.”
Naperville resident Miguel Beltran doesn’t live in the surrounding area but felt compelled to speak out against the Karis facility.
“To impose a power-hungry data center in this community without even having knowledge of what the long-term energy infrastructure is going to be looking like, I think, is foolhardy,” he said.