After much debate, Yorkville may be pumping the brakes on data center projects moving forward.
Recently, a developer withdrew a request to rezone a property for a potential data center campus due to a lack of support from Yorkville’s City Council, and the city’s mayor has since indicated future projects are unlikely to secure city approval going forward.
Yorkville has become a sort of hub for data center developments, in part due to the area’s proximity to a ComEd substation. The city has approved three major data center projects in recent years.
With these proposed developments, however, has come significant criticism, an online petition with nearly 5,000 signatures opposing data center projects in the city and a resident lawsuit.
The project for which the rezoning request was withdrawn, originally set to be voted on by the City Council on Tuesday, would have joined what may one day be a corridor of data center campuses in the city in the northeast quadrant of Eldamain Road and Route 34.
The rezoning request was brought forward by Matt Gilbert of Chicago-based Green Door Capital, who presented the petition on behalf of Yorkville Nexus V LLC, the property owner.
Sometimes referred to as the Meyer project, the proposal concerns a portion of land that sits just south of Project Steel — a proposed 540-acre data center campus that recently secured city approval — and directly north of a possible CyrusOne data center campus that has been proposed in the area. Another CyrusOne site was approved in the area in 2024. CyrusOne also has a data center property nearby on Aurora’s far East Side.
A little further north of the proposed Meyer project sits the controversial 1,000-acre Project Cardinal, which has also gotten the green light from Yorkville.
The original proposal for the Meyer project was to rezone about 130 acres south of Corneils Road and east of Beecher Road, west of the nearby Caledonia neighborhood, for a potential data center campus.
That rezoning request, however, failed to secure a positive recommendation from Yorkville’s Planning and Zoning Commission in January.
It was then brought forward to the City Council last month, with some changes.
Namely, the petitioner rescinded the original request to rezone the eastern parcel, totaling around 37 acres, of the project from a multi-family residential designation to agricultural. The revised request was to rezone the two western parcels, totaling around 91 acres, from multi-family residential to a manufacturing designation.
The petitioner for the project also agreed to include a 1,100-foot setback from the east of the project, closest to nearby residential properties. The petitioner had also agreed to donate the eastern 37 acres of the property to the city to ensure it would remain open space and promised to pay impact fees in the amount of about $10 million.
A vote on rezoning, however, was tabled at the March meeting.
Then, at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, requests to approve rezoning and a development agreement for the project were removed from consideration because the petitioner had withdrawn its application, with the city indicating the move was because the project did not have the council’s support.
Gilbert, of Green Door Capital, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The project in question had been under discussion for months, Yorkville Mayor John Purcell told The Beacon-News, and had undergone changes based on city feedback, but still had not managed to secure sufficient City Council support.
That could be attributed to several factors, he said — that the developer didn’t have a data center user for the proposed campus yet, unlike other proposed projects in the area; the property’s proximity to a residential neighborhood; and the fact that the council had already approved several data center projects in the area.
“As things progress, you … always reevaluate and see where you’re at,” Purcell said.
He said that the city’s approved three data center campuses already, and, though they’ve OK’d zoning for other potential projects in the area, the city hasn’t approved further plans for those sites.
“We feel real good about the three projects we have,” Purcell told The Beacon-News.
As for what’s next for the property in question, Purcell said that’s up to the property owner, though, given its current zoning designation, it’s possible townhomes or apartments could be built on it one day.
But, while the city will have to consider any development applications that come its way, Purcell said it seems there is not support from the City Council at this point to approve any more data center projects.
“For now, we’ve had enough,” Purcell said.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
