Developer withdraws application for controversial Lisle data center

A developer has scrapped a controversial plan to build a new data center on the former Lockformer property in Lisle.

Village officials announced on social media Wednesday that the developer has withdrawn its application for the proposed data center at 711 Ogden Ave.

The withdrawal comes more than a month after a public hearing on the proposal was postponed because of the size of the crowd.

“I think it’s the right decision for now,” Lisle Village President Mary Jo Mullen said. “There’s lots of work to be done before the wider population feels comfortable with a data center.”

Cloud Centers LLC had proposed a 256,000-square-foot, 50-megawatt data center on the shuttered Lockformer property at 711 Ogden Ave. The 18-acre parcel on the south side of Ogden has sat vacant for more than 20 years.

The Lockformer property was the center of a firestorm after a toxic chemical used in the plant had leaked into the drinking water.

“Village officials and staff continue to explore additional opportunities for future redevelopment of the site,” the village said in a social media post.

In January, more than 300 residents attended a public hearing for the project, prompting Lisle officials to postpone the meeting due to concerns about exceeding the 250-person limit of the village board room.

“I think they saw the writing on the wall with how many people showed up at planning and zoning and all the opposition they had,” Lisle resident Vanessa Berry said.

Berry, who lives in a subdivision near the Lockformer property, helped organize residents opposed to the data center proposal.

“Our stance was we’re not against data centers, we just don’t want them 150 feet from our homes,” she said.

Berry said she plans to work with residents to ask the village board to impose a moratorium on any new data centers until the state provides further guidance and more research can be done.

Craig McGahey, a managing partner for Cloud Centers LLC, cited public opposition as one of the reasons the company decided to drop the proposal.

"In the end, we were not given a chance to present (our proposal) due to a highly intense group of citizens who flat out rejected the project," McGahey said in a Wednesday phone interview. "We're disappointed ... we thought it would have been a valuable asset in the community."

McGahey, who has been involved in data center development for 15 years, said he was unsure that "any level of analysis would persuade many of these people that a data center can operate close to or within mixed-use residential communities."

Though his company has successfully located data centers in other communities, McGahey noted scrutiny over data centers has intensified within the last year. In January, Naperville's City Council rejected a proposal for a 145,000-square-foot data center.

McGahey added that he will be looking outside the Chicago area, possibly outside Illinois, to locate a project similar to the one proposed in Lisle.