What's Happening Elsewhere: Illinois Communities Grapple With Data Center Proposals

Granite City isn't the only Illinois community having this conversation.

Across the state - and across the country - residents are showing up at council meetings, signing petitions, and asking hard questions about what data centers actually mean for the places that host them. Some are welcoming the facilities. Others are fighting them tooth and nail.

Their experiences offer lessons for any community that might find itself facing similar decisions. Here's what's happening.

The Chicago suburb of Naperville has become ground zero for data center resistance in Illinois.

A company called Karis Critical Data Centers proposed building a 211,000-square-foot facility at the former Lucent Center campus. The project went through months of public hearings, with residents packing council chambers to voice their concerns.

The issues they raised will sound familiar to anyone following this debate:

Noise. Residents worried about the constant hum of cooling systems and the periodic roar of backup generators being tested. Data centers run 24/7, and the equipment needed to keep thousands of servers cool generates significant sound.

Air quality. Backup generators typically run on diesel fuel. When they're tested - usually monthly - or when they kick in during power outages, they release particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants. Neighbors raised concerns about health impacts, particularly for children and people with respiratory conditions.

Grid strain. Naperville's power comes largely from coal-generated electricity. Adding a massive new load would increase both costs and emissions.

Property values. Homeowners near the proposed site worried about what a massive industrial facility would do to their neighborhoods.

An online petition opposing the project gathered more than 5,000 signatures. At one public hearing, a resident put it bluntly: "This is a profit-driven proposal. These companies do not have to live with the long-term consequences that we will live with."

Despite the opposition, Naperville's Planning and Zoning Commission voted 8-1 to approve a conditional use permit. The decision moved to the City Council, where the debate continued.

The Naperville case illustrates a tension that exists in many communities: local governments may see tax revenue and economic development; residents see an industrial facility moving into their backyard.

Meanwhile, in central Illinois, Sangamon County is wrestling with a proposal that dwarfs the Naperville project.

A planned development would include as many as six large one-story buildings with a combined footprint equivalent to 26 football fields. Construction is scheduled to begin this year.

Environmental advocates have raised concerns about the project and what they describe as a lack of transparency in the approval process. The Sierra Club has called for a 180-day moratorium to allow residents time to learn about the proposal, ask questions, and participate meaningfully in the decision.

"There haven't been any public meetings to ask questions or get real answers," one Sierra Club representative said. "Before most folks even know what's going on."

The concerns in Sangamon County go beyond the immediate development:

Water. Data centers need enormous amounts of water for cooling. What happens to local wells and aquifers when a facility is consuming millions of gallons daily?

Chemicals. Some cooling systems use specialized chemicals. What safeguards exist to protect groundwater and soil?

Electrical infrastructure. What upgrades will be needed to the regional grid, and who pays for them?

The Sangamon County situation highlights a common pattern: by the time residents learn about a data center proposal, the approval process is often well underway. Communities that want meaningful public input need to build it into the process from the beginning - not scramble to catch up after decisions are already being made.

Looking just beyond Illinois, a Michigan community offers an example of grassroots organizing that's taken the data center debate directly to voters.

In Augusta Charter Township, a small farming community southeast of Ann Arbor, residents learned in May 2025 that an 822-acre data center was proposed for their area. Within weeks, a group called PACT (Preserve Augusta Charter Township) began collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would give voters a direct say.

They needed 561 signatures. They gathered 957 in about two weeks.

The concerns were familiar: noise, light pollution, water usage, utility bills, and what one organizer described as the loss of the community's "sense of place."

"With this data center plan they're basically saying, 'We know that, but business is more important,'" one longtime resident said. "Landscape and preserving the identity of a place does not register on their needs list."

The Augusta Township experience shows that communities don't have to accept data center proposals as inevitable. Organized residents can create mechanisms for democratic input - though doing so often requires quick mobilization and sustained effort.

If you want to see what happens when a region embraces data centers wholeheartedly, look to northern Virginia.

Loudoun County alone hosts approximately 200 data centers - more than anywhere else in the world. Virginia overall has more than 500 facilities. The region has welcomed the industry with open arms, offering tax incentives and streamlined approvals.

The results are instructive.

On the positive side, data centers have generated significant tax revenue. In Loudoun County, data center contributions totaled $875 million in 2024 and accounted for 38% of the county's overall tax revenues. Property tax rates for residents have been kept low, in part because data centers shoulder such a large share of the burden.

But there are downsides too.

Virginia's electricity prices rose 13% in 2024 - more than double the national average. Household power bills are projected to increase by more than 25% by 2030. Regional grid infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with demand.

The political backlash has been significant. Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the 2025 governor's race in a landslide, campaigning in part on making tech companies "pay their own way" for electricity infrastructure. Even in a state that enthusiastically welcomed data centers, voters eventually pushed back on the costs.

And residents living near the facilities have raised quality-of-life concerns. "Data centers aren't always great neighbors," observed one former state utility official. "They tend to be loud, they can be dirty and there's a number of communities, particularly in places with really high concentrations of data centers, that just don't want more data centers."

If you want to see the case for data centers, proponents point to Papillion, Nebraska - a suburb of Omaha that has become ground zero for the industry's Midwest expansion.

Since 2019, Google and Meta (Facebook) have built major data center campuses along the Highway 50 corridor in Sarpy County. Google has invested over $4.7 billion in the region and now operates facilities in Papillion, Omaha, and Lincoln. Meta's campus has expanded to 2.6 million square feet across 290 acres.

The results, by conventional economic development metrics, look impressive.

Google employs approximately 740 people at its Nebraska facilities - far more than the 30-50 permanent jobs typically cited during permitting. (Chris Slusser, Madison County Board Chairman, confirmed this during a December tour: "I asked the director about that because it seemed like far more people were on site. He told us they employ roughly 740 full-time employees.")

The infrastructure investments are massive. The local utility, Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), upgraded transmission lines from 161-kilovolt to 345-kilovolt capacity. New substations went in. Roads improved. The Highway 50 corridor transformed from agricultural land to a technology hub.

When Slusser asked Papillion officials about negatives, "the only complaint they mentioned was temporary traffic congestion during construction. Otherwise, the projects were described as game changers."

But the Papillion story has another chapter that proponents mention less often.

To meet surging data center demand, OPPD approved a $2 billion to $2.2 billion expansion plan - nearly doubling the district's generation capacity. Customer rates are expected to increase 2.5% to 3% per year from 2027 through 2030 to pay for it.

In other words: the data centers did trigger infrastructure investment. That investment did benefit the broader region. But OPPD customers - including residential ratepayers who don't work for Google or Meta - are paying for it through higher bills.

The Papillion experience also involved some unusual arrangements that may not translate elsewhere. Google worked with OPPD to create a procurement framework where Google supplies clean energy resources to the utility, executes large-scale renewable energy deals, and shares cost savings with OPPD's customer base. This included granting OPPD access to wind energy projects that Google had already contracted.

Whether such arrangements would work with Ameren Illinois - an investor-owned utility operating under different regulatory constraints than a public power district like OPPD - is an open question.

What Papillion shows is that data centers can work for a community - if the community negotiates hard, if the utility is a willing partner, and if the infrastructure costs are managed carefully. What it doesn't show is that data centers automatically benefit the communities that host them. The details of the deal matter enormously.

Across these examples, several themes emerge:

Information matters. In communities where residents feel they've been kept in the dark about data center proposals, opposition tends to be stronger and more organized. Transparency from the beginning - even if the answers are complicated - builds more trust than silence.

Timing matters. Once a project is proposed and the approval process is underway, residents are often playing catch-up. Communities that establish clear standards in advance are better positioned to negotiate.

Jobs aren't the main driver. Notice that in none of these cases are residents primarily focused on employment. They understand that data centers don't create many permanent jobs. The debates center on quality of life, infrastructure costs, environmental impacts, and whether the tax benefits are worth the tradeoffs.

Local concerns vary. What matters most depends on the community. In a farming area, water usage might be paramount. Near a residential neighborhood, noise and air quality take precedence. For a region with an already-strained grid, electricity costs dominate. There's no one-size-fits-all answer.

Organized residents can win. Data center developers have enormous resources and sophisticated political operations. But as the Michigan ballot initiative shows, motivated residents who organize quickly can create real obstacles - or at least force more meaningful engagement.

The "success stories" are complicated. Even in places like Papillion, where officials describe data centers as "game changers," ratepayers are absorbing billions in infrastructure costs through higher electric bills. The question isn't whether data centers can benefit communities - it's whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and who exactly bears those costs.

At the state level, Illinois hasn't moved as aggressively as some states to address data center impacts.

Some states have enacted specific protections:

Illinois has tax incentive programs that can benefit data centers, but fewer requirements around job creation or cost allocation than some peer states. Communities are largely on their own when it comes to negotiating protections.

This means local zoning and ordinances take on added importance. If the state isn't establishing baseline protections, cities and counties need to do it themselves - as Mayor Parkinson is attempting in Granite City.

What can we learn from these other communities?

Get ahead of it. Mayor Parkinson's approach - establishing zoning protections before any proposal arrives - is exactly what experts recommend. Communities that wait until a project is proposed are negotiating from weakness.

Don't let tax revenue blind you. Yes, data centers can generate tax revenue. But the Naperville and Virginia examples show that residents care about more than money. Quality of life, environmental impacts, and fairness in cost allocation matter too.

Demand transparency. If a proposal does come, insist on public meetings with real information - not just presentations from the developer. The Sangamon County concerns about lack of meaningful public input are a warning sign.

Know your leverage. Data centers need specific things: land, electricity, water, connectivity. Communities that have these resources have leverage. Use it to negotiate protections rather than just accepting whatever terms a developer proposes.

Watch what happens elsewhere. The national debate over data centers is evolving rapidly. What's considered acceptable today may not be acceptable tomorrow. Virginia's political backlash shows that even enthusiastic early adopters can change their minds.

Understand the Papillion model - and its limits. When proponents cite Nebraska as a success story, ask the follow-up questions: Who paid for the $2+ billion in infrastructure upgrades? What are residential ratepayers paying now versus before? Could similar arrangements work with Ameren, or is OPPD's public power structure essential to how those deals came together? The Papillion story is more complicated than the headline version suggests.

There's a larger question lurking beneath all of these local battles: How should communities relate to an industry that generates enormous wealth but shares relatively little of it with the places that host it?

Data centers are the infrastructure of the digital economy - an economy that has created trillions of dollars in value for a handful of tech companies. Those companies need physical locations for their servers. They need electricity and water and land. They need communities willing to accept industrial facilities in their midst.

What do they owe those communities in return?

The traditional answer - tax revenue and jobs - worked reasonably well when the facilities in question employed thousands of workers who spent their wages locally. It works less well when the facilities employ dozens and the tax revenue is reduced by decades of abatements.

Communities across Illinois and beyond are grappling with this question in real time. There's no consensus answer yet. But the more communities share information and learn from each other's experiences, the better positioned they'll be to negotiate deals that genuinely serve their interests.

Granite City doesn't have to figure this out alone. We can learn from Naperville's debates, Sangamon County's concerns, Augusta Township's organizing, and Virginia's experience. Their stories are our preview of what might come.

This is the fourth article in a five-part series on data centers and what they could mean for Granite City. Next: "Questions Worth Asking: A Citizen's Guide to Data Center Proposals."

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