Yorkville council to take up controversial data center projects Tuesday

YORKVILLE, Ill. (WLS) -- A push to turn a quiet suburb into a technology hub is getting some negative buzz from people who live there.

There are several projects at various stages of approval under consideration.

Tuesday night, there are two proposals up for zoning matters.

Legacy River Equestrian Center is across the street from one of the locations, which would be one of the largest data centers in the world.

"The largest one right now is in China. It's 10.7 million square feet. [The] one across the street from us would be 17 million square feet. So, it's huge, and we don't need Yorkville to become the data center capital of the world," Co-Owner of Legacy River Equestrian Center John Flisk said.

John and Dorothy Flisk have run their business for ten years, they say they now feel that their chosen lifestyle is under attack by the development of technology-driven data centers.

"We were going to build a home coming up recently. I mean, coming up soon, but we just are waiting to see what happens with the data centers, because potentially we'll have to close this business," Dorothy said.

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Project Cardinal and Project Steel are both on the agenda on Tuesday at Yorkville's City Council meeting.

They're separate projects at different stages of the approval process, but together they may take up more than 1,500 acres of land in Kendall County.

Leesa Poss said her parent's old home, where her daughter's family currently lives may be nearly boxed in by the time these proposed data centers are built.

"The data centers will be on three sides of them. It'll be across the street, alongside and behind them," Poss said. "So far, I have not heard of too many data centers that have been good neighbors, and that's what scares us a lot."

"We tried to, you know, do our best to do as much research as possible, to, you know, throw in some pretty heavy development controls and accountability, and, you know, hopefully people at least understand, you know, that part of it," Yorkville City Administrator Bart Olson said.

If the Yorkville City Council gives Project Cardinal a thumbs up, it would have full city approval to proceed.

Yorkville's city council meeting gets underway at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 651 Prairie Pointe Drive.