CyrusOne Kicks Off Chicago Data Center Campus

October 4, 2024

Data Centers Chicago Development MidwestMoreNews

The facility marks the REIT’s second project in this suburb.

Picture from the groundbreaking ceremony in Aurora, Ill., with key participants. — Governor JB Pritzker and local elected officials, alongside CyrusOne and ComEd representatives, attended the groundbreaking ceremony. Image courtesy of CyrusOne

CyrusOne has broken ground on its second data center campus in Aurora, Ill., a Chicago submarket. The project is set to comprise two buildings totaling 446,000 square feet and will deliver an initial IT capacity of 40 MW with scalable capacity to meet future growth needs.

Partners on the project include ComEd, which will help deliver the needed electrical infrastructure. The development is expected to cost about $350 million and is scheduled to come online in two years.

Owned by KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners, CyrusOne currently operates 24 sites across the U.S. The new data center campus marks a key expansion for the REIT in Illinois, where its total capital investments have now surpassed $1 billion.

READ ALSO: More Data Centers, Please!

The development is taking shape at 2725 Bilter Road, just off Interstate 88. Downtown Chicago is 34 miles away, while downtown Aurora is some 10 miles southwest.

The data center’s site was initially designated for hospitality and retail uses. Earlier this year, CyrusOne and the city of Aurora reached an agreement, in which the company paid $15.5 million to compensate for the alteration in land use.

The campus will also feature two 350-foot towers, which will accommodate a collaboration between the developer, CME Group and Google, according to Yahoo Finance. The buildings are set to house financial trading systems for CME customers, which are currently operating in CyrusOne’s other Aurora data center.

More data centers to come online in Chicagoland

According to a JLL midyear report on U.S. colocation data centers, Chicago had about 818 MW completed in the first half of this year. Additionally, there were 733 MW under construction, with 1,222 MW in planning stages. A total of 466 MW were absorbed in the first six months of this year.

In June, Compass Datacenters began work on a hyperscale data center campus in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The project will include five buildings and will be the firm’s first hyperscale campus in the state. The development’s total cost is estimated at about $10 billion.