Data center operator Endeavour pays $27M for Aurora site

Endeavour Edged Electric paid $27 million for the 65-acre site set to be developed as a data center to serve a major tech company west of Chicago.

The Connecticut-based company, which will own and operate the center, bought the land at the southwest corner of Bilter and Eola roads in Aurora from a trust whose individual owners’ identities are shielded in public records, in a deal recorded in DuPage County on April 27.

The developer, Atlanta-based Seefried Industrial Properties, has told city officials that they can’t say which company will anchor the data center, but it will be Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon, the Aurora Beacon-News reported. Endeavour did not respond to a request for comment.

Builders and operators of data centers — facilities that house back-end IT systems including mainframes, servers and databases for companies — have been bullish on the Chicago area in recent months. Demand for hyperscale, which refers to data centers’ hardware, facilities and capabilities, remained strong in the second half of 2022, with vacancy continuing to fall and resting below 6 percent during that time period, according to a February report from CBRE.

Texas-based data center developer Aligned paid about $29.1 million for a Class B office building near O’Hare International Airport in March that it likely plans to redevelop, and Microsoft expanded its Chicagoland data center operation with the $41.5 million purchase of a 30-acre speculative industrial site in Hoffman Estates in February.

Seefried plans to construct three buildings on the Aurora property, completing the first by December, a spokesman reportedly told officials. The developer also plans to build a public electric vehicle charging station accompanied by several retail spaces at the edge of the first data center building along Bilter Road.

The site is located across Interstate 88 from a CyrusOne data center that services the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and wireless telecommunications and systems integration company Scientel Solutions, adding to an area of the city’s East Side that’s becoming a high-tech corridor.