Washington DC based global data center provider, CloudHQ has broken ground on a $2.5 billion data center campus in Mount Prospect, Illinois. The campus spanning 1.5 million square feet marks CloudHQ’s entry into Suburban Chicago. The CloudHQ Data Center campus will be set up on the land previously used by United Airlines. It plans to construct three data centers and a new substation in conjunction with Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd).
“CloudHQ is excited to be bringing this hyperscale development to the Village of Mount Prospect,” said Keith Harney, COO of CloudHQ. “The location, scale, and speed to market of our ORD Campus reinforces all we strive to achieve, as partners to our customers. The demand we see for this location is already extremely encouraging and will be supported by a new dedicated on-site ComEd substation that will allow us to scale to power future customer demand.”
“ComEd is thrilled to support the launch of one of the largest data centers ever seen in our state, as part of our ongoing work to power growth by Illinois companies who continue to bring jobs and investment into the communities we are proud to serve,” said Gil C. Quinones, CEO of ComEd. “Companies like CloudHQ continue to look to northern Illinois and our service territory thanks to the unparalleled access to clean, affordable, and reliable power that is essential for meeting the demands of today’s economy.”
The CloudHQ data center campus
The first phase of the CloudHQ project is expected to get completed by 2024. Additional two buildings will be constructed in the next 3-5 years based on demand. CloudHQ will develop a hyperscale data center campus that will house hundreds of thousands of computer servers in each building, to cater to the needs of the world’s largest customers. The CloudHQ data center campus will be built to a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard, indicating the company’s commitment to sustainable development.
The project will generate 1,000 construction jobs over two years and an additional 2,000 full-time construction jobs in the later phases of construction. After completion, CloudHQ’s data campus will give jobs to over 100 full-time workers, including technical positions needed for data center maintenance and construction.
The new onsite substation by ComEd will be built to support CloudHQ operations and may cater to future needs in the area as well. For the first time, ComEd will install new 100MVA transformers at the site to support the needs of the data center industry, while minimizing the footprint of electric equipment on site.
When it was launched in 2017, CloudHQ was focusing on the Northern Virginia market. In recent years, it has ventured globally with data center development projects in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Mexico, and Brazil.
Data center market in Chicago
The data center industry in Greater Chicago has seen a surge of activity since 2019 when Illinois approved new tax incentives. The CloudHQ data center project is the 8th new data center development in the ComEd service territory across northern Illinois. Illinois currently houses more than 70 data centers of which six are under construction, and thirteen are in early design or planning stages. Aligned in Northlake, Skybox Data Centers and Prime Data Centers in Elk Grove Village, and NTT Global Data Centers Americas in Itasca are the other recent new market entrants in Suburban Chicago in recent months.
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