Developers Planning Another Large-Scale Data Center Near Chicago

A developer has proposed building a data center in Hillside, Illinois, about 15 miles west of downtown Chicago. 

Hillside officials granted preliminary approval last week for a 245K SF data center planned for a vacant property along the south side of the Eisenhower Expressway, the Village Free Press reports.

The developer, listed on the project application as DPK Hillside LLC, hopes to build a two-story data center on the 13-acre site adjacent to a car dealership at 101 N. Wolf Road. 

Speaking with local planning officials last week, representatives of the developer indicated that the planned data center would host hyperscale tenants — generally Big Tech cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft. They estimated a two-year timeline for the project’s completion, pending its final approval by local lawmakers next week, according to the Village Free Press.

While DPK Hillside appears to be a shell company created for this project, the address included in filings with local officials matches that of The Daly Group, an Oak Brook-based firm that primarily develops commercial shopping centers, casinos and logistics facilities in Illinois and the Midwest. There is no indication that The Daly Group has developed another data center project.

The owner of the Hillside property, Newcastle Partners LP, had proposed building a light manufacturing and warehouse complex on the site in 2022, the Village Free Press reported. But that plan was scrapped after concerns from nearby residents over an increase in truck traffic. Newcastle Partners has since filed a lawsuit against the village that is pending. 

The Chicago area is the country’s third-largest data center market by total inventory, with more than 800 megawatts of existing capacity and 600 MW under construction, according to JLL. 

Major data center firms like T5, Prime, NTT, CyrusOne, CloudHQ, Aligned and Edged Energy are expected to deliver new Chicago-area projects in 2025 and 2026.

But Hillside and its surrounding areas haven't been part of the region’s data center development boom, which has seen the lion’s share of new projects emerge in Elk Grove Village and other areas closer to O’Hare International Airport. 

The data center development cluster closest to Hillside is in Northlake, where Aligned Data Centers opened a campus two years ago. Microsoft and Digital Realty also operate facilities there.