By Nick Reiher

After seven hours of testimony, mostly in opposition, the Joliet City Council overwhelmingly approved plans for a 795-acre data center, the largest in Illinois, conditional on the company finding a user.

But opponents, many of them veterans of the lengthy fight against the massive NorthPoint warehouse plan just to the south of the data center project, are not giving up the fight.

Some are calling for a recall of the Joliet Council members who voted for the plan — Larry Hug, Pat Mudron, Sherri Reardon, Cesar Cardenas, Joe Clement, Juan Moreno, Jan Quillman and Mayor Terry D’Arcy. Councilwoman Suzanna Ibarra was the lone no vote.

Others said they would make sure to try to vote them out at the next City Council election. Some saw the city’s announcement three days before the first hearing of PowerHouse Hillwood Holding LLC promising $100 million to the city for infrastructure improvements as buying votes.

But the Joliet Plan Commission already The city’s Plan Commission voted 7-1 to support the proposed project’s annexation agreement, zoning change from agricultural A-1 to light industrial I-1 and a preliminary planned unit development.

The Plan Commission originally was to hear the proposal in October. But the developers — Hillwood, a Ross Perot Company, partnered with PowerHouse, a data center developer — pulled the plan for a time to get answers for residents who had heard of other municipalities turning down data centers due to concerns about high water and electricity usage, as well as noise issues.

An open house was held at Joliet Junior College in the beginning of February. But some residents who attended said they got conflicting answers, if questions were answered at all.

Attorney David Silverman, representing the developers, said the landscape provided a good location. (Officials had been considering the dormant Chicagoland Speedway property until NASCAR announced races would resume this July).

Unlike the warehouses, Silverman said, the data center would not add to the traffic on Illinois 53, and would provide tax revenue to local governments.

To address concerns seen from data centers in other communities, company representatives said they would be using a recycled water cooling system for generators that wouldn’t stress the city’s supply. They also said would comply with the stringent EPA standards for emissions.

Hoping to allay fears of overloading the local power grid, developers also said ComEd has committed to building a power station nearby to supply only the data center.

City officials said the project is expected to generate approximately $310 million in property taxes over 30 years, in addition to utility taxes. Revenue projections include $677 million for Joliet Township High School District, $76 million for Joliet Junior College and $146 million for Will County over the same period.

The project will create 700 permanent onsite jobs, they said, and an estimated 7,000–10,000 locally sourced construction jobs.

As with NorthPoint, supporters — mostly union representatives encouraged by the prospect of thousands of construction jobs — were pleased with the outcome.

Despite the assurances by the company, as well as city officials’ promise to monitor all aspects of the plan — opponents do not believe them. Once again, as with NorthPoint, they saw approvals by the Plan Commission and the City Council, despite dozens of testimony again, as a betrayal.

Residents also are concerned about what type of data would be stored, for how long and who would be using the data center. Silverman cautioned that the re-annexation request was not a referendum on Artificial Intelligence. Hug said the future users may store some AI, all or none.

Company representatives have said they’ve been in talks with the major players in data usage, but they wouldn’t sign until zoning is approved.

The City of Joliet’s dedicated webpage for the proposed data center project can be found at Joliet.gov.

Freelance reporter Stephanie Irvine contributed to this story.