There’s a reason getting directions for Legacy River Equestrian Center on Ashe Road can be confusing.
The official address is Sugar Grove, but try to use the village’s library and you are told to pay a hefty outsider fee, say the center’s owners Dorothy and John Flisk. And if you type their property into a locator map, it could pop up under Bristol or even Plano, depending on your phone’s GPS system.
That’s because they live in “no-man’s-land,” said the couple, who pay Kendall County taxes, could possibly send their 4-year-old daughter to Plano schools and got no say in who was elected to the Yorkville City Council that recently annexed over 1,000 acres right across the road from them into Yorkville.
Which is the next big step in putting this bucolic area on the map – as one of the largest data center campuses in the world.
The property, which lies northwest of Route 47 and Galena Road, south of Baseline and east of Ashe roads, would hold 14 buildings to be constructed in phases over the next 10 to 20 years. So you bet the Flisks were at that packed meeting on Tuesday when the council voted to annex the property, fully aware of just how much the project is going to impact their lives.
No one, it seems, wants to live near these controversial server farms, where light, noise and air pollution are major concerns, as is the amount of water and electricity they demand, not to mention the construction traffic that will come when dirt gets moved to build these facilities and roads have to be widened to accommodate drastic changes in the landscape.
Would horse people want to continue coming to a once-pastoral retreat with the hum of data centers and the rumble of construction trucks, the couple ask, questioning their personal and professional future with the equestrian center, where they have poured so much blood, sweat and tears — not to mention over $800,000 in improvements – since the property was purchased in 2016.
Then there are the horses themselves.
As the Flisks well know, these beautiful animals are far more sensitive to sound than humans – including the humming noise emitted 24/7 by the cooling equipment from data centers. Horses aren’t just hearing more frequencies, the couple explain. They are much more alert to small or sudden sounds, which is why it’s important to keep environments calm, quiet and predictable.
“Even with the storm last night … they get funny about things like that,” said Dorothy. “I can’t imagine what the horses will experience.”
In an effort to answer that question, John recently uploaded a Facebook video asking for information from veterinarians and other horse people who could offer personal evidence. The post got 22,000 views, including from unhappy folks living next to data centers, but no helpful information.
“I think it’s so new,” said Dorothy of the country’s data center land rush, “there’s not a lot of research on it.”
Veterinarian Joan McArthur did speak out for the horses at the Tuesday meeting, as well as predicting businesses like the equestrian center will not survive the planned development. But the Flisks are convinced all these concerns have fallen on deaf ears.
“It is disturbing, to say the least,” said Dorothy, an entrepreneur who spent much of her career working with vulnerable children and who purchased the then-vacant property for the center because she felt “there had to be a better way” to care for and train horses.
Three years later, she married John, the center’s trainer, who had competed internationally and is licensed at the top level to judge national and international show jumping. Together, “we turned it into a happy, beautiful place,” said his wife, noting that Legacy River went from two horses and one student to 28 horses and 70 lessons a week.
The Flisks also expanded their dream by adding eight stalls and upgrading the riding arena with custom-made safety walls, radiant heaters, industrial fans and improved lighting. Future plans included another aisle of stalls and, after years of living in the stable’s one-bedroom apartment, building their dream home on the property.
Upon learning last year that Yorkville, which already has given the green light to a 230-acre data center at Eldamain and Faxon roads, was pushing this 14-building Project Cardinal data center development and a slightly smaller Project Steel to the south of Galena, they joined other residents in opposition. The effort involved countless hours of research, putting together a change.org petition that has over 4,100 signatures and speaking out at meetings, including Tuesday night’s marathon that resulted in a 7-1 vote for annexation.
No-man’s-land now appears to belong to the digital age.
“Walking out last night was tough,” admitted John on Wednesday. “I felt hopeless. But after sleeping on it … this is our home, our way of life, everybody here is like family to us. … We are not giving up.”
His wife nodded in agreement. “I do feel like we need to take a dramatic next step, but we can’t do it alone. We probably need to sue or lawyer up,” she said.
“We owe it to the horses. We owe it to the wildlife,” she said. “As stewards of the land, we have a duty and responsibility to do what we can to ensure their welfare.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
