Residents against a proposed data center in suburban Naperville plan to pack a council meeting Tuesday night, where members are expected to consider a possible vote to move the development forward.
Developers have already made changes and even scaled back on their initial proposal, but some residents said they don’t buy it. They told NBC Chicago the bottom line is they don’t want the data center in their neighborhood.
“We want a no vote from the council,” said Clara Lambert, a Naperville resident.
Lambert lives just feet away from where developers want to build the new data center along the Interstate 88 corridor in Naperville.
“Our biggest thing – it being located in the middle of a residential area,” she said. “The area has been transitioned over the last six years in residences, and its proximity to homes is what our biggest challenge is.”
She’s part of a coalition made up of dozens of residents concerned about the project and possible health risks.
“We’re talking about a lot of noise, a lot of diesel emission, and even with the highest standards -there’s still emission, and any emission is bad,” she said.The Naperville City Council will vote on whether to approve a conditional use permit and development agreement for a data center with Karis Critical for the project at 1960 Lucent Lane.
“We have no interest in building and developing a facility that causes trouble within the community,” said Greg Strom, SVP of Strategy and Operations for Karis Critical.
Developers said their plan calls for a smaller campus of one 200,000-square-foot building instead of two after hearing from concerned residents.
“Because those buildings are paired down, some of the equipment and infrastructure required also starts to decrease, the number of backup generators decreases, the number of air-cooled chiller that go onto the roof to chill the equipment also goes down,” he explained.
Oher changes include downsizing the number of parking spaces and increasing the height of the equipment screening wall. Developers also conducted multiple noise studies and said the power usage would be capped at 36 megawatts down from 100 megawatts.
“We as a developer do not want rates to go up, so we’ve committed to any infrastructure build-out cost,” he said. “We committed to bearing any additional cost that comes a lot with that 36 megawatts of power.”
Developers believe the data center will help to revitalize the tech corridor in Naperville and believe it will benefit the community in the long run creating jobs and tax revenues to provide a boost for the local economy. But some residents are still not sold.
“The things they have said they have done—they say they’re mitigating the concerns – whether it’s noise or diesel emissions, but mitigation is not elimination,” said Hiba Suleman, a Naperville resident. “The risk is still present.”
At least 40 residents have signed up to speak during public comment. If developers get approval, they still need to close on the property and secure several permits. If everything goes according to plan, they could break ground as early as summer.
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