Data center provider CyrusOne is in negotiations with officials in Aurora, Illinois, to develop its third data center in the city.
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The Dallas-based firm hopes to construct a 428K SF data center on a 30-acre parcel along Interstate 88, the Chicago Tribune reports. The Biltner Road property sits directly across the highway from CyrusOne’s existing Aurora campus and just a stone's throw from a separate 60-acre data center park being developed by Edged Energy.
CyrusOne first established a presence in Aurora in 2016 when it acquired a 428K SF facility in the city and then added a 440K SF data center on the site the next year. The Aurora campus handles data for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as well as a number of overseas exchanges. But these data centers are now “out of room,” according to Aurora Chief Management Officer Alex Alexandrou.
Aurora officials have been soliciting development on the 30-acre property where CyrusOne hopes to build for years, but not as a data center. The city marketed the parcel as a potential hotel site and had even explicitly barred data centers as a potential use. But after extensive efforts to attract a hotel failed, the city is now open to a data center, Alexandrou told the Tribune.
“The market has changed,” he said. “Adaptability in this environment is key. There is a need for data centers.”
The city is negotiating a deal with CyrusOne seeking financial reimbursements in exchange for the zoning changes needed to build the data center. Aurora is looking to recoup as much as $11M it put toward the construction of a nearby highway interchange, as well as any revenue it might lose because no hotel is being built on the site.
While Aurora is not a major data center hub, there are just five campuses listed as operating in the city, CyrusOne’s planned facility is the second new project underway in the area. Edged Energy and Seefried Properties are in the process of jointly developing a three-building campus across Biltner Road from the CyrusOne site. The tenant anchoring the project, launched early last year, will reportedly be one of Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon.
The larger Chicagoland area is one of the nation's largest data center markets, and a wave of development has moved forward in the northwest suburbs near O'Hare International Airport. In December, NTT Global Data Centers acquired a pair of office buildings near the airport with plans to demolish them for data centers.
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