CyrusOne is planning a data center outside Chicago, Illinois.

First reported by WSPY News, three applications are set to go before the Yorkville Planning and Zoning Commission this week.

The project from CyrusOne is explicitly for a data center campus, while two others – being filed with the project partner of CyrusOne – include the option for data centers.

Yorkville is a city within the Chicago Metropolitan Area in Kendall County, located west of Chicago.

CyrusOne looks to expand in Chicago

C1 Yorkville LLC and Yorkville Nexus LLC are aiming to develop a data center campus on 230 acres east of Eldamain Road, north of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad and Faxon Road, and west of Beecher Road.

The companies have filed applications with the United City of Yorkville, Kendall County, Illinois, requesting special use authorization for a Planned Unit Development (PUD) and preliminary PUD Plan approval for a data center campus.

The project would consist of up to nine two-story buildings developed over 10-20 years, as well as an on-site substation. Phase one of development would see one building and the substation built.

C1 Yorkville is named as a subsidiary of Texas-based data center firm CyrusOne.

The land was formerly known as Lincoln Prairie. An asphalt plant was once set to be developed there but never materialized. Despite “interest from several large-scale industrial developers,” the site remained undeveloped for nearly 20 years.

In 2023, Green Door Capital (dba Yorkville Nexus LLC) purchased the property with the intention of finding an industrial user to redevelop the site as a data center campus.

CyrusOne currently owns and operates a two-building campus near to Yorkville in Aurora at 2905 Diehl Road.

Purchased by an affiliate of CyrusOne in 2016, the company recently filed to construct another building at the campus as well as expand nearby to that site.

It also operates a site at 1850 Springer Drive in Lombard.

“The proposed data center campus... will allow CyrusOne to expand its footprint in the Chicagoland region beyond its existing C1 Facility [in Aurora] for the express purpose of meeting the growing demand of its customer base,” the company said in the documents.

More data centers coming to Yorkville?

Immediately south of that proposal on the other side of Flaxon Road, Green Door Capital and Kelaka LLC are seeking to annex and rezone approximately 148 acres of unincorporated farmland for the purpose of constructing and operating a future industrial/data center land use. The two development scenarios include industrial and data center development.

North of CyrusOne’s project, Green Door Capital is again filing to annex and rezone approximately 138 acres of unincorporated farmland (this time with the Hagemann Family Trust) for the purpose of constructing and operating a future industrial/data center land use. Again, the two development scenarios include industrial and data center development.

Chicago-based Green Door Capital is a private equity sponsor founded in 2011 and focused on acquiring value-add industrial, office, and retail opportunities.

The Chicago area is one of the largest data center markets in North America, but the availability of server space is low. According to a report from Newmark released earlier this month, data center inventory in the region has increased 35 percent over the last five years, but availability is running at just 1.6 percent.

Microsoft recently acquired 500 acres close to Yorkville in nearby Plano.