Two large data center campuses are being proposed outside Chicago, Illinois.

One project would see 14 buildings totaling 1.8GW developed in the Kendall County city of Yorkville. For the other project, real estate giant Prologis is looking to develop a 24-building campus in the city, close to a recently approved CyrusOne campus.

Project Cardinal comes to Yorkville?

As reported by WSPY News and Shaw Local, an application for a 1,000-acre campus known as Project Cardinal is being submitted in the Yorkville area of Kendall County.

According to Yorkville documents, Pioneer Development, LLC is aiming to develop 14 two-story data center buildings totaling 17 million sq ft (1.57 million sqm) and 1.8GW, alongside two on-site substations and a switchyard.

The property is located northwest of Route 47 and Galena Road, south of Baseline Road, and east of Ashe Road.

The property is owned by Galena & 47th, LLC, MPLIV10, LLC, Sanjay and Sameer Gupta, Dale L. Konicek, LLC, and The Konicek Family Limited Partnership.

The applicants are requesting annexation, rezoning, special use authorization for a Planned Unit Development (PUD), and preliminary PUD plan approval for approximately 1,037 acres of vacant land across 20 parcels.

The proposal aims to rezone the parcels from R-1 Single-Family Suburban Residence District, R-2 Single-Family Traditional Residence District, R-3 Multi-Family Attached Residence District, and B-3 General Business District to M-2 General Manufacturing District to allow for a data center campus.

Each phase of the project is expected to include one building, and each building phase is expected to become operational within 24 months of groundbreaking. The first building is slated for operation in 2029.

Eleven data centers are set to total approximately 1.9 million sq ft (176,515 sqm) and 144MW each, with three others totaling approximately 940,000 sq ft (87,330 sqm) and 73MW each.

The proposal is set to go before the planning commission in June and the city council in July. The public hearing for the annexation is to go before the city council in May.

It’s not clear which company is behind the project. In Yorkville documents, Matt McCarron of Cirrus Farms in Sheridan, Wyoming is listed as the person behind Pioneer Development.

Yorkville is a city within the Chicago Metropolitan Area in Kendall County, located west of Chicago. Data center operator CyrusOne was recently given the green light by Yorkville’s city council for a 230-acre campus at Eldamain and Faxon roads. The project could see up to nine two-story facilities developed.

Google also has a campus known as Project Cardinal in the works outside Charlotte, North Carolina.

Prologis proposes Project Steel

The city of Yorkville’s projects page also lists another data center project in the works from logistics real estate giant Prologis.

Project Steel would see the development of a 540-acre campus with 24 two-story data center buildings totaling more than 9 million square feet (836,125 sqm), as well as three substations.

Each data center would total 400,000 square feet (37,160 sqm). Construction on the first phase is anticipated to begin during the summer of 2027. The site would be fully developed in three phases over the course of 20 years.

The currently undeveloped site – located between Galena Road, Eldamain Road, and Corneils Road – is owned by the Rosenwinkel Family Trust, George Ostreko Jr. Et Al, Mary Auer, and Jerry G. Marilee Foltz. The site is generally used for seasonal farming.

The applicants are filing to rezone the parcels from R-1 Single-Family Suburban Residence District to M-2 General Manufacturing District to allow for data center development.

The proposal is set to go before the planning commission in June and the city council in July. The public hearing for the annexation is to go before the city council in May.

Real estate investment trust Prologis has traditionally focused on developing logistics and industrial warehouses, but has a growing interest in data centers.

The company currently has 1.4GW of secured power for data centers in its pipeline, with another 1.6GW "in the advanced stages of procurement," according to a January 2025 update. It could build out as much as 10GW over the next 10 years.

The company previously converted a warehouse site in the Elk Grove area of Chicago into a data center in partnership with Skybox. The property was recently sold to HMC Capital.

The company has other data center projects in Virginia and Texas, and recently mooted plans to expand into Europe.