Infrastructure technology company Endeavour Energy has been named as the company behind Edged, a major data center proposed on 560 acres on DeKalb’s south side.

But they won’t be the ones using it, according to new information released by the city of DeKalb on Wednesday ahead of a Dec. 1 public hearing.

Instead, if approved by the DeKalb City Council, Endeavour Energy – which also has a data center in Aurora – plans to rent out its data center servers to other large-scale users.

The Planning and Zoning Commission hearing starts at 6 p.m. in the downstairs Yusunas Room of the DeKalb Public Library, 309 Oak St. Representatives from Edged are expected to be present on Monday to address the science behind their proposal, city staff said.

City staff, including City Manager Bill Nicklas, are recommending approval of the plan. In his review of the proposal, Nicklas wrote that the development would generate significant benefits to DeKalb’s economy, including investment, construction, new tax revenue, and job creation.

But he also said a big reason is that Edged has proposed a data center build, which city officials believe addresses growing public concerns related to environmental, energy, and community impact connected to massive data center developments.

“We anticipate that the Edged development will have profound economic impact on our community,” Nicklas said. “But just as profound is the intention to also mitigate environmental impacts that future generations will appreciate.”

The company markets itself online as a maker of sustainable data centers, providing “carbon neutral, zero water” data centers for major cloud companies.

What company will use the Edged data center in DeKalb, if approved, isn’t yet known. The city cited examples such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in an agenda published ahead of the commission meeting.

And according to preliminary plans, the four-building megasite known as “Project Vector” isn’t projected to be fully built out until 2032, documents show.

If approved, the data center campus would be built just south of Meta’s DeKalb Data Center, with fewer buildings but more land. Edged would have four data center campus buildings and two electrical substations, on about 560 acres of land on both east and west sides of Illinois State Route 23, north of Keslinger Road and west of Crego Road, records show.

Most of the land is owned by JJK 343 LLC, which also does business as ChicagoWest Business Center, according to DeKalb County property records. Much of the land was purchased as recently as Sept. 9 for millions of dollars. ChicagoWest is the petitioner behind Project Vector, asking for city permission to annex, rezone, and develop the land for Endeavour Energy.

The land is currently in unincorporated DeKalb County.

Major operators already on the city’s south side, such as the $1 billion Meta DeKalb Data Center, rely on ComEd for their energy needs. But ComEd is in the middle of a $197 million upgrade to its transmission lines and substation infrastructure, according to city staff. The Kishwaukee Area Reliability Expansion Project, pending approval from the Illinois Commerce Commission, isn’t likely to be completed for several years.

In the interim, Edged has proposed using natural gas to run its data center generators, plans show.

Meta’s DeKalb Data Center was first announced in 2019, then under the code name “Project Ventus.” It came online with 5 buildings and 2.3 million square feet in 2023.

In the years since, data center development – bolstered in large part by the surge in artificial intelligence use – has exploded in Illinois.

Illinois’ data center boom was aided by a 2019 bill signed by Gov. JB Pritzker that offered tax incentives for data centers built in the state.

But many proposals across northern Illinois have been met in recent weeks with fervent public opposition.

Data centers use massive amounts of water and energy daily to keep giant computer servers that operate 24/7 cool enough to work properly. Meta’s DeKalb Data Center is capped at 200,000 gallons per day, according to city documents.

[ From data centers to grid costs, here’s why your energy bill keeps rising ]

The city of Yorkville just approved plans for a 1,037-acre massive data center, expected to include 18 two-story data center warehouses and three electrical substations when complete. Estimates show that the site could use as much as 350,000 gallons of water per day. A lawsuit filed by some Yorkville residents seeks to halt the development, citing concerns over sound pollution and decreased property values.

A much smaller data center development in Batavia has been capped at 1,000 gallons per day by the city. Rochelle residents have petitioned to stop a proposed 300-square-foot data center. In Joliet, a proposed 795-acre data center development has been put on hold “indefinitely,” at the request of city staff after hearing resident concerns related to water consumption, electricity usage, and noise.

But Nicklas and City Planner Dan Olson said Endeavour Energy has plans to address those concerns in DeKalb, according to a briefing written by them ahead of Monday’s public hearing.

The city of DeKalb expects such developments to be “environmentally compatible,” they wrote.

“Edged has pioneered a new approach to on-site power that can responsibly support a data center’s power needs while the regional electrical energy supplier is ‘ramping up,’” according to city staff.

Waterless chillers for servers

According to the city, Edged has proposed a data center build that uses air instead of water to cool its servers.

Natural gas instead of diesel would fuel the generators that spin and create electrical energy to run the operation, according to the project proposal.

Under the plan, all buildings in the Edged data center would be “substantially lower” than 75 feet in height.

City staff said the developer has promised to account for noise, too: The engines operate at a higher frequency than other data centers might due in part to the innovative cooling technology, Nicklas said.

The land also qualifies for tax incentives identical to those approved for Meta’s data center, documents show.

That’s provided Edged invests at a minimum $800 million with 900 square feet of building space with at least 50 full-time jobs, according to the city. If those stipulations were met, Edged would qualify for a 55% property tax abatement for the first 20 years of operation. The project also would qualify for a state-level sales tax exemption associated with building materials, documents show. And Edged would pay half of its DeKalb electricity tax after the first full calendar year, effective for 20 years after.

An estimated timeline shows the first building, at 980,000 square feet, would be built by the end of 2027. The second, at 515,000 square feet, by 2028, the third, at 980,000 square feet by 2030, and the fourth, 490,000 square feet, by 2032.

City leaders already backing proposal

City officials have touted data center property tax revenue as substantial despite the decades-long tax incentives, however.

Since 2022, Meta has paid more than $46.3 million in property taxes to DeKalb city taxing bodies, records show. That includes about $3.8 million to the city, $4.6 million to the county, and about $28.6 million to DeKalb School District 428.

Nicklas and Olson wrote that city officials have traveled in-state and out to review products and methods operated by Edged in recent weeks.

‘[A]nd have met with some brilliant minds, with a passion for doing inventive things that can help DeKalb keep pace with the demands of a changing regional economy, and in an environmentally responsible fashion," they wrote.

Multiple public entities have already expressed support for Project Vector, documents show. Those include the DeKalb County Economic Development Corporation (which oversees the Enterprise Zone); the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, DeKalb Park District, DeKalb Public Library, Kishwaukee College and the Kishwaukee Water Reclamation District.