Barrington Hills Data Center, Barrington Hills, Illinois

Brennan Investment Group, a Rosemont developer, pitched a 110 acre artificial intelligence data center campus at Penny Road and Route 68 in Barrington Hills, Cook County, Illinois, in December 2025. The $2 billion plan was withdrawn in late January 2026, before a special plan commission meeting on February 2 where Brennan was to present it, and the developer said it was acting "based on initial feedback."

Brennan told village trustees the land was under contract and put the return to Barrington Hills at $20 million to $40 million a year in property tax and more than $10 million a year in utility tax, against the $3,000 a year the parcel pays now. He called the project "very low impact" and said it would be "fully enclosed with abundant privacy landscaping." Trustee Laura "AB" Ekstrom led most of the questions that followed his five-minute presentation.

Residents pushed back hard: a Change.org petition from a group calling itself Barrington Hills Against Data Centers argued that a large site can use 3 to 7 million gallons of water a day in a village that depends on groundwater, and cited diesel generator emissions and the village's own tree and groundwater rules. By January 28, 2026, the petition had 1,303 signatures; it has since passed 2,000.

Brennan has built data centers in Elk Grove Village and Rolling Meadows. The village said only, "At this time, the village considers this matter closed and does not anticipate any further discussion," and CBS Chicago reported it remained unclear whether Brennan had dropped the project altogether or only declined to present it at that meeting.