Iron Mountain plans $75M data center in Des Plaines

Iron Mountain Data Centers plans a $75 million data center in Des Plaines, joining the nation’s third-largest market for data centers.

Des Plaines village officials this week approved to the Pritzker family-owned company’s bid to win a Cook County tax incentive for the 330,000-square-foot facility on 13 acres at Maple Street and Touhy Avenue, according to the Daily Herald.

The site was the former home of a Hart Schaffner Marx apparel facility.

Village approval was needed in order for the county to grant the project a tax incentive that will reduce its property tax assessments for 12 years. Construction would start in 2020 and be completed in 2024.

Pushed by businesses’ growing demand for cloud-computing storage, developers built almost 57 megawatts of capacity — enough to power more than 16,000 homes — around the Chicago metro area since last year, according to CBRE. That’s about twice the region’s typical annual pace of data center construction. [Daily Herald] — John O’Brien