About 50 people in Joliet protested against a proposed data center, and 20 of them took the protest to the front of one of the car dealerships owned by the mayor of Joliet.

The two-hour protest Saturday was meant to alert people to the upcoming Joliet City Council annexation vote for the data center project.

The council meeting will start at 4:30 p.m. on Monday.

The protest was at Larkin Avenue and Jefferson Street, considered the busiest intersection in the city.

Many of the protesters then followed Sam Coffey of Joliet, one of the lead organizers, to the front of D’Arcy Mitsubishi on West Jefferson Street. It’s one of the dealerships owned by Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy.

The protesters chanted “No data centers at all! Shame on the mayor! Shame on the council!”

They waved signs that said, “City not for sale” and “People and planet over profit.”

Hillwood and PowerHouse Data Centers are the developers of the 795-acre project that would be built on farmland south of Chicagoland Speedway.

The project has been opposed by residents who believe it is a threat to public health and the environment and will lead to higher electricity and water bills.

The developers promise to provide more than 7,000 construction jobs and 700 high-paying permanent jobs and generate $310 million in property taxes over 30 years.

Coffey said he knows data centers have been around for a long time and have uses outside of artificial intelligence. But he said the explosion of AI has led to an explosion of data centers.

“Anybody who says that this has nothing to do with AI, they’re wrong,” Coffey said.

Coffey said opponents are worried about how AI is “being used in war [and] how it’s being used to take jobs.”

Morgan Stanley, a multinational investment bank, has projected that $2.9 trillion will be spent on global data center construction through 2028, and that AI has become a “structural force in economic expansion.”

With just days left until the council vote, city officials announced the developers promised $100 million to the city if the council approves their plans.

The developers also announced in a news release Friday that they received 6,000 letters of support from “local residents,” but it did not specify how many letters came from residents of Joliet and neighboring towns.

“I think it’s really easy for a big corporation to garner support, and they’ve got a bunch of money. We’re all here. I spent a couple dollars on signs. I don’t have that much money like a corporation does,” Coffey said.

Nine out of 80 people spoke in favor of the data center during a March 5 meeting before the Joliet Plan Commission. Opponents presented a petition with more than 3,000 names of people opposed to the project.

Gigi Jaback, one of the protesters Saturday, said she’s opposed to the data center because she believes it will have a negative impact on electricity, water and noise levels.

“We’ve gone this long without having data centers. We can continue,” Jaback said.

Among the biggest supporters of the Joliet data center include the building trade unions. Those unions have historically influenced city elections and decisions on controversial projects, such as the NorthPoint Development warehouse project.

“It’s going to be a good project for us. We’ve got an agreement with Hillwood. It’ll be a union project. We’re going to put, hopefully, put a lot of local folks to work out here,” said Tom White, executive director of Three Rivers Construction Alliance, during the March 5 plan commission meeting.

Jaback said she’s a “union person” and she understands the unions want the data center project because it brings jobs.

“But this is the wrong job. This is the wrong type of thing,” she said.

She said D’Arcy should be “putting something up that’s going to benefit the people, not corporations.”

Chris Carlson of Joliet said he’s an electrical engineer and is concerned about the power usage of the data center.

“It’s a nice-looking facility rendered in the drawings, but I think the reality is going to be quite different,” Carlson said.

Data centers have been linked to increased energy demands that have led to higher utility bills for consumers. A state report last year warned of a future electricity shortage in Illinois and cited demand from data centers as a primary cause.

Joliet city staff said the data center “will secure and pay for its own electricity,” and existing ComEd customers will not subsidize energy costs.