Lake County Hits Pause on Data Centers

Lake County is now the latest in a series of Chicagoland municipalities to look at halting data center development.

The county board voted on Tuesday to implement an eight-month moratorium on proposed building code and zoning changes so that county officials can define building classifications and performance standards. They also added an administrative deferral of up to 120 days for data center-based applications, according to the Daily Herald.

As data centers rapidly become the most pursued new developments in the country, municipal leaders are responding by putting pauses in place so they can take a closer look under the hood. In nearly every single pause, local officials claim they’re going to be investigating the potential impacts data centers have on water usage and how much power the server farms require.

Crucially, Lake County’s Unified Development Ordinance does not have a formal definition for data centers, and has no precedent for how they should be regulated. The moratorium, taken up even though there are no pending data center applications in the county’s jurisdiction, intends to remedy the lack of precedent, according to the outlet.

Lake County is the first county-wide edict in Chicagoland, but several local councils have pushed to block similar developments. Grayslake village approved the T5 data center development, and shovels have already hit dirt, but residents are considering a lawsuit to force the village to declare the approvals invalid, according to the outlet.

Opposition to data center developments in Yorkville and Joliet have retained the Law Office of Ronald D. Cummings to aid them, according to the outlet. Naperville City Council stopped a Karis Critical proposal in January, and nearby Lisle had local friction with a Cloud Centers LLC data center.

According to the Data Center Map, there are 208 data centers currently operating or under development throughout Chicagoland.

— Hunter Cooke