A 90,000-square-foot building at 245 Kehoe Blvd. will house the first data center in Carol Stream.
Courtesy of Michelle Noyes
Carol Stream’s first data center is being constructed in an industrial area north of North Avenue.
The installation of precast concrete wall panels started Nov. 15 for a 90,301-square-foot, single-story data center developed by Oppidan Holdings LLC of Minnesota.
The building will sit on an 11.41-acre industrial property at 245 Kehoe Blvd., at Kimberly Drive, the previous home of the Henkel Corporation business manufacturing and supply company.
That building was demolished in 2022, and the site underwent soil remediation in May 2022.
Data centers house information technology for building, running and delivering applications and services, and storing and managing associated data, according to IBM.
Modern data centers may be used as remote facilities or networks owned by cloud service providers for shared use by companies and customers, according to IBM.
The village of Carol Stream received the building permit application and building permit plans on April 19, and issued permits on Sept. 13. Salas O’Brien of Seattle is the architect.
With the developer bound by a nondisclosure agreement, the village has not been provided with the name of the end user of the facility, said Carol Stream Community Development Director Don Bastian.
“The nature of these places is they store a lot of data and data quite often contains sensitive information or personal information, so they tend to be secure facilities,” he said.
An 8-foot-tall fence will be installed along the perimeter of the building for added security. The property also will include 28 parking spots in front of the building’s Kimberly Drive entrance. In addition, there will be a stormwater drainage pond in the southeastern corner of the site.
Bastian said a 3-acre parcel to the west of the retention pond may be sold for additional development.
After construction, the data center will need to be filled with the computer servers and technology necessary for its operation. Bastian said it’s not expected to be operational until 2026.
“Municipalities view data centers as positive economic development projects because they can generate significant municipal utility taxes while placing very low demand on municipal services,” Bastian said.