Karis Data Center, Naperville, Illinois

Karis Critical, the developer whose Lucent Lane data center plan Naperville's City Council rejected in January 2026, is exploring the purchase of the 168-acre former BP campus at 150 W. Warrenville Road for a data center and an advanced manufacturing hub. "We have no pending proposal for the 168-acre campus," Karis spokesperson Patrick Skarr said in June 2026. "We've made no decision about whether to pursue an investment in the corridor or not"; the company does not own the land.

According to a May 29 city memo obtained by the Naperville Sun, Mayor Scott Wehrli, City Manager Doug Krieger and representatives of the Naperville Development Partnership and JLL, which is listing the property, were briefed on Karis' concept in May. Skarr described a stand-alone data center of 100,000 to 125,000 square feet and, at full buildout, about 1.5 million square feet of advanced manufacturing space that he said could bring 1,000 to 1,500 jobs.

The site, contaminated from prior use by the U.S. Army and BP Amoco, has buildings that would need to be demolished. "We were bullish on the potential opportunity for some advanced manufacturing to basically be the identified use for the site," Wehrli said, adding that the data center part was viewed less favorably because of community sentiment from the Lucent Lane fight: "Anything that gets promoted in that space is going to bear a high degree of attention."

That fight is why the city is wary: the City Council voted 6-1 in January 2026 against a Karis data center on the former Alcatel-Lucent site at 1960 Lucent Lane after residents packed hearings over diesel generators and health concerns. Skarr said "everything is on the table from our perspective" for the BP site and that the company was weighing the city's feedback.

Karis is active elsewhere in the Chicago area: in Hoffman Estates, the company withdrew a separate rezoning request for a data center on July 1, 2026 after residents and the Plan Commission pushed back, and it is also developing a data center in DeKalb. The former BP campus has sat vacant for eight years, and only three developers contacted the city about it in the past year, none of which submitted plans.

Nothing has been filed for the BP campus. Any data center proposal Karis brings would go first to the Planning and Zoning Commission, then to the City Council for a final vote, as happened with the Lucent Lane plan.