Data centers in Kendall County, Illinois: 2 projects mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Yorkville set out to build its own "data center alley": at one point the Kendall County city west of Chicago was weighing about a dozen proposals across more than 3,000 acres of the Eldamain Corridor. Three have been approved: CyrusOne's 228-acre campus at Eldamain and Faxon roads, Pioneer Development's 1,034-acre Project Cardinal northwest of Route 47 and Galena Road, planned at 1.8 gigawatts of power, and Prologis's 540-acre Project Steel around Galena and Eldamain roads. The council approved Project Cardinal on March 10 after a nearly six-hour meeting, mostly of residents speaking against it, with overflow seating and 165 more people on Zoom.

The approvals came with money and with anger. Cardinal's developers pledged $51 million over four years and Project Steel's developers $40 million, much of it for Yorkville School District 115. Resident Christine Dupler called the deal a "drop in the bucket," and Maria Torres accused the city of being "in it for the money." Cardinal's developers switched to air-cooled closed-loop cooling, cutting projected water use from 350,000 gallons a day to about 42,500. By April, Mayor John Purcell said there was "no more appetite" on the council for further data center proposals.

The fight moved to court. A residents' group, Preserve Our Yorkville & Community LLC, sued the city and the Cardinal and Steel developers, arguing neighbors were not properly notified and that studies of sound, traffic and property values ignored the long construction period. A separate neighbor's lawsuit settled, requiring the section nearest his land to be built last instead of second; the council approved that settlement on July 14. Pioneer has also asked for more time to buy its Cardinal land, and the council extended its deadline from July 1, 2026 to December 31, 2027. If Pioneer does not close by then, the annexation, zoning and $51 million agreement for Project Cardinal all become void.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.