Rejection of data center hurts trades workers

The Naperville City Council regrettably rushed a vote to deny the proposed investment to redevelop a portion of the former Lucent campus into a state-of-the-art data center. This is disappointing to the DuPage County Building Trades.

For families to afford to live in Naperville, we need our jobs corridor to provide jobs, and those celebrating the denial of a significant investment to renew a vacant property in Naperville’s research corridor are misguided. Make no mistake about it, six elected officials took years of high-paying, high-skilled work away from the men and women of the trades, hurting local families, the economy and our community.

Jobs are dignity, careers are stability and a strong jobs corridor in Naperville is the foundation for both. Unfortunately, in Naperville personal agendas became more important than process, officials prioritized politics over fact gathering and our community lost an investment that would have propelled the community forward for years to come.

The DuPage County Building Trades represents 24 affiliated construction trades and 30,000 union members who live, work and shop in DuPage County. We and the community, deserved better.

Frank Gravina

Warrenville