Beware zoning idea

On June 3, the Hoffman Estates Plan Commission heard a request to rezone the 186-acre Plum Farms property, at Route 59 and Route 72, from commercial/traditional-neighborhood to M-2 manufacturing. The petitioner is H.E. Holdings LLC, the entity for Florida data-center developer Karis Critical — the same company whose data center Naperville denied in January after thousands of residents objected.

What should alarm every resident is what the application leaves out. There is no site plan, no stated use and no traffic, noise, water, stormwater, lighting or air study. Yet because Hoffman Estates already made data centers a permitted use in its manufacturing districts, rezoning this land to M-2 effectively approves a data center by right — before the public ever sees what is actually being built. The zoning is the whole ballgame, and it is being sought in the dark.

The location makes it worse. Unlike the Microsoft and Compass campuses near commercial corridors, Plum Farms directly borders quiet Barrington Hills neighborhoods and sits within the Spring Creek watershed, beside Cook County forest preserves. The property's own annexation agreement envisioned housing and retail, not a 24/7 industrial campus of chillers and diesel generators.

We are not anti-business. We are asking for basic accountability: no rezoning without a complete plan and independent studies, subject to public hearing. We urge our neighbors to pay attention, and we ask officials to deny or table this request until residents can see the full scope of what they are being asked to accept.

Michael and Christine Irizarry

Barrington Hills