Stack Infrastructure Plans Second Data Center Near O’Hare

Another major player is betting big on Chicagoland’s data center market.

Denver-based Stack Infrastructure has plans for a 36-megawatt, two-story data center in Elk Grove Village, near O’Hare International Airport, CoStar reported.

The 263,000-square-foot facility will rise less than a mile from Stack’s existing CHI01 campus and is the latest addition to one of the most capacity-constrained data center submarkets in the country.

Stack, which was acquired earlier this year by Blue Owl Capital via its purchase of Stack’s parent company IPI Partners, paid $42.1 million this month for nearly 27 acres within the Fortune Business Campus at Busse Road and Howard Street. The price was almost $1.6 million per acre.

The site previously housed several industrial and flex buildings. Riverbend Industries, a Chicago firm affiliated with one of Stack’s development partners, was the seller.

The development will include a closed-loop water cooling system and be optimized for AI, machine learning and cloud workloads, Stack said.

Demand for data storage fueled by artificial intelligence and cloud computing has been unrelenting. Industry professionals anticipate data center availability in top U.S. markets could all but disappear this year, and developers are racing to keep pace.

The O’Hare-area market is one of the most competitive and supply-limited in the country, according to Stack.

The trend is reflected in other recent moves in Elk Grove Village, including Austin-based Digital Realty Trust’s $900 million recapitalization of two data centers and a $185 million loan on a third. More recently, Virginia-based data center operator EdgeConneX paid $36.6 million for two buildings at 821-891 Busse Road and the adjacent 901-985 Busse Road.

Local officials are embracing the shift. Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson said the project will bring jobs and “resourceful development” to one of the city’s “most vital business corridors.”

Chicago’s suburbs have become a national hotspot for data center investment, particularly in repurposed industrial zones like the O’Hare corridor. As AI accelerates demand, developers are rushing to convert or replace legacy buildings with hyperscale-ready infrastructure — including Dallas-based Compass Datacenters’ demolition of Sears’ former headquarters in Hoffman Estates in the fall to make way for an entirely new campus.

— Judah Duke