One day after the Sangamon County Board voted March 23 to table a data center proposal, the city of Aurora, about 175 miles northeast of Springfield, enacted some of the nation’s tightest restrictions on future data center developments after years of citizen complaints.
The next Sangamon County Board meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, and has been moved to the BOS Center to accommodate public turnout. However, it remains to be seen whether a County Board member will call forward the tabled zoning resolution that would allow CyrusOne to establish a $500 million data center in Sangamon County. Illinois Times reached out to four different Board members prior to publication – two Democrats and two Republicans – and did not receive responses from any of them.
Aurora has five operational data centers and another five that were in development prior to the passage of the city’s latest regulations; two of the 10 projects are owned by CyrusOne. The densely populated city is about three-fourths the geographical size of Springfield with nearly the same number of residents as all of Sangamon County, and residents have complained about noise, lighting and other issues stemming from the close proximity of the various data centers…