A Joliet Plan Commission hearing on a proposed 795-acre data center likely will be pushed back a month.

City staff is requesting that the hearing, originally scheduled for the commission meeting on Thursday, instead be held on Nov. 20.

A staff memo attached to the Plan Commission’s Thursday agenda, which includes the data center proposal, provides little information about the project.

Instead, the staff memo, which typically provides details about projects, asks that the hearing be postponed “to give staff and the developer additional time to prepare the annexation and development agreement.”

The Plan Commission is to consider an annexation agreement and planned unit development for the project.

“Due to the size and complexity of the proposed development, additional analysis is needed to properly evaluate the subject proposal and to draft an optimal annexation and development agreement,” the staff memo states.

The project includes plans for 12 three-story buildings that would be used to process data for a growing demand for information and images distributed electronically.

A Plan Commission vote would serve as a recommendation to the City Council, which would have the final decision on the plan for the data center.

Joliet Community Development Director Dustin Anderson last week said that a City Council vote had not been scheduled. He said staff first wanted to address the community impact of the project.

Data centers typically use large amounts of electricity and water.

Anderson said the data-center plan includes a ComEd substation on the site that would be funded by the developer.

The developer is HW Technology Park Development, a division of Texas-based Hillwood. Hillwood has previously been active in the Joliet warehouse market.

The data center would be built in the vicinity of Rowell and Bernhard roads on land owned by Berhnard Farms, Inc., according to the staff memo.