Data Center Locations

38 Data Centers Proposed for Chicago Suburbs The town of Yorkville, Illinois is considering two proposals for large cloud campuses that could add 38 buildings and 26 million SF of data center development. Yorkville is 50 miles west of Chicago, and reflects a trend in major markets in which new submarkets emerge amid constraints on power and development sites in core markets. The new proposals would continue the Western expansion of the Suburban Chicago market, which is anchored in Elk Grove Village near O'Hare airport and has spread out in recent years. CyrusOne was the first provider to build in Yorkville, and other projects are following. The new projects: -Prologis has filed plans for Project Steel, which would span 24 data centers and 9 million SF. -Project Cardinal from Pioneer Development envisions 14 large data centers and up to 17 million SF of development. Read more: https://lnkd.in/epr9B45T

Amazon and Meta have said they are building gas plants to power their data centers because it's the fastest path to power. But this week, Google proved you can do it even faster with co-located renewables. And I found documents showing their strategy. On Wednesday, Google announced a new data center in Texas that will be powered by renewables built by AES Clean Energy. The press release was light on details, so I used Cleanview's platform to try to learn more about the project. In December AES filed a document showing that it plans to connect an 850 MW data center (Google’s) to its massive solar and wind project in West Texas. The project would use 600 MW of solar and 945 MW of wind power. Using both solar and wind enables near round-the-clock clean energy. And by connecting to the grid, Google gets the reliability it needs when solar and wind output drop. But the creative part is how this deal enables Google to skip Texas’ large load queue and get online in 18 months instead of 5+ years. Like the rest of the country, Texas has a massive backlog of data centers trying to connect to its power grid. At the end of 2025, the backlog was 225 GW—equivalent to 20 New York City’s of power demand. For data center developers like Google that backlog means waiting years to connect to the grid. These delays have led some companies like Meta to start building their own gas power plants as I wrote in our latest report. But Google found an alternative path—one that relies on a huge amount of onsite renewable energy. Thanks to a recent rule change, a data center in Texas can piggyback off a power project’s interconnection agreement if its co-located. And that’s what Google appears to be doing here with AES. The documents we found suggest Google is using AES’ grid connection, which took years to secure to get around the ERCOT large load queue. The wind phase of the project is expected to come online in August 2027. If Google had gone the traditional route, there’s no way they could have achieved that timeline. If they had tried to connect this data center in Virginia, they would have had to wait until the early 2030s. It’s worth noting that this timeline is similar to the one Amazon and Meta are achieving by using natural gas. They’ve argued that they have to use gas because waiting for renewables delivered through the grid would take too long. But with this project, Google is proving that it’s possible to build a 850 MW data center in 18 months powered almost entirely by co-located renewables. Developers and policymakers should take note. We wrote more about this project in a brief for Cleanview research subscribers. That brief includes a detailed project timeline, the equipment being used, and the broader policy and market context. Send me a note or visit our website if you’re interested in becoming a subscriber.

"How to Evaluate a Building for Data Center Conversion" Earlier this week I shared how Chicago developers turned a $12 million office building into a $40 million data center in 15 months. Today, let's talk about what to look for. The Five Critical Factors: 1. Power Infrastructure This is the dealbreaker. Can you increase capacity to 30-50 megawatts? Existing transformers? Proximity to substations? The Chicago building had substantial electrical infrastructure from its trading floor days. Without power capacity, you don't have a deal. 2. Building Structure You need: Wide, column-free floors High ceilings for cooling Floor load capacity for server weight Cavernous layouts The Cboe building was designed for trading floors—which converts perfectly to data centers. 3. Existing Connectivity "This building is very heavily wired from its time as a trading platform," said buyer Daniel English. Look for heavy wiring, fiber proximity, and urban locations near connectivity hubs. 4. Cooling Potential CRE Daily reports liquid cooling is becoming standard as power densities jump from 120 kW per rack today to 600 kW by 2027. Can the building support liquid cooling systems and upgraded HVAC? 5. Urban Location Advantage English explained why urban conversions command premiums: "Just like Amazon last-mile delivery, data centers take less time to deliver when they're close." Low-latency applications—trading, streaming, gaming—pay premiums for urban proximity. The Best Candidates: Former trading floors, financial services buildings, telecom facilities, heavy industrial with power infrastructure. My Take: The Chicago flip proves it: The biggest returns aren't in greenfield development. They're in buying assets where someone else already solved the hard problems and the market hasn't caught up. What building in your market has these five factors? Because while everyone else sees obsolete real estate, you might be looking at a 233% return in 15 months. What are you seeing that others are missing? Sources: "Flip of former Cboe Global Markets headquarters in Chicago shows soaring data storage values" by Ryan Ori, CoStar News, October 23, 2025; "Data Centers Driving Growth In AI And Real Estate" CRE Daily, PrincipalAM research

Forget power shortages. The real crisis? Land. Data center expansion isn’t being held back by technology—it’s geography. - Northern Virginia is running out of land. AWS’s $35B investment faces zoning delays. - Microsoft is pivoting to secondary markets like Poland and Sweden. - Google’s Oregon expansion sparked lawsuits over water rights—showing that land, not just energy, is the hidden battle. Power is just one part of the equation. The future of AI, cloud, and hyperscale data centers depends on land access, zoning approvals, and long-term energy policies. Here’s how the industry is evolving: 1. Land – The foundation of all projects, but hidden risks lie in zoning and utilities. Northern Virginia is tapped out. Ohio and Texas are next. 2. Powered Land – Pre-permitted land is the new advantage. Digital Realty secured sites in Frankfurt to fast-track European expansion. 3. Powered Shell – QTS Data Centers’ “Speed to Scale” strategy prioritizes ready-to-fit-out sites to cut deployment timelines. 4. Turnkey – Instant deployment, but at a premium. Equinix offers high-performance turnkey solutions in 70+ markets. 5. Build-to-Suit – The long game. Meta’s 900-acre AI-focused campus in Kansas City is setting the standard. 6. Hyperscale – AI workloads demand long-term PPAs and strategic site selection. Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft lead with 600+ hyperscale facilities. 7. Edge – AI, IoT, and 5G drive low-latency demand, but profitability remains a question mark. AWS Local Zones and Cloudflare’s edge network are leading expansion. 8. Modular – Google and Microsoft bet on prefabricated solutions for faster global scaling. 9. HPC – AI clusters require extreme power density—100 kW per rack is forcing data centers to rethink cooling strategies. The biggest data center risks in 2025 aren’t external—they’re being decided today. Where do you see the biggest land constraints—or opportunities? #datacenters #AI

We keep talking about speeding up permitting. But one of the fastest paths forward isn’t reform—it’s starting where permission already exists. Call it the brownfield (or “pre-permitted land”) strategy. Instead of fighting through years of approvals, leading developers are doing something smarter: They’re building on land that already carries the DNA of infrastructure—industrial use, zoning alignment, and grid access. Why it works: - You inherit prior environmental review and land-use approvals -You’re closer to substations and transmission -You avoid the longest, most uncertain part of development -And importantly: communities already understand—and often expect—this kind of use. This isn’t theoretical. It’s how hyperscalers are scaling right now: • Google in New Albany, Ohio — sited its major data center campus inside the New Albany International Business Park, a pre-zoned industrial hub designed for large-scale infrastructure (The New Albany Company) • Microsoft in Boydton, Virginia — built on legacy industrial/tobacco-region land with existing transmission corridors • Meta Platforms in Altoona, Iowa — developed in an established industrial zone with prior land-use alignment The Google example is the tell. They didn’t wait for permitting reform.They went where permitting had already, effectively, been solved. That New Albany campus—part of a broader multi-billion-dollar Ohio buildout (Construction Dive)—sits in a master-planned industrial park specifically designed to attract large, power-intensive users. That’s not just good siting. That’s strategy. Here’s the deeper shift— We’re moving from: “Find land → fight for approval → build” to: “Find land where approval is already embedded → build immediately” There is a massive, underused inventory of these sites: 1) Retired power plants; 2) Industrial parks; 3) Brownfields and “soft brownfields”; 4) Underutilized commercial zones with grid access; etc. If we start treating interconnection + prior land use as assets, not constraints, timelines don’t just shrink—they collapse. From 5–7 years… to something closer to 1–2. Permitting reform still matters. But the market isn’t waiting. It’s routing around the problem—by starting in the right place. #DataCenters #EnergyTransition #Infrastructure #Grid #EconomicDevelopment #CleanEnergy

In Alberta, we're venting data centre heat in a province that's frozen six months a year. Every megawatt into a GPU comes out as heat. Traditional designs throw that heat into the atmosphere with fans and cooling towers. In Peace River or Edmonton in January, that's not waste management - it's wasted opportunity. Stockholm Data Parks has a goal: 10% of the city's heating from data centre waste heat by 2035. They already heat 30,000 apartments through their Open District Heating program. Helsinki's Microsoft campus will supply 40% of local district heat demand. These aren't pilot projects - they're infrastructure. For Alberta, heat reuse is a social license accelerator: -District heating for adjacent residential -Greenhouses and season extension (food security in northern communities) -Industrial low-temp process heat -Aquaculture Cold climate isn't just a cooling advantage. It's a heat-reuse advantage - if we design for it from the start. Municipal lever: require a heat-reuse feasibility study for any data centre proposal above 50 MW. Not a guarantee it gets used - just proof it was considered. Question: What's the best local use for low-grade waste heat in your municipality - greenhouses or housing? #Alberta #DataCenters #DistrictEnergy

Europe’s data center growth is no longer decided in FLAP-D. It’s increasingly decided by one thing: time-to-power. The Nordics are moving from “nice alternative” to core strategy. Recent forecasts for the Nordics data center market shows a grow from 866 MW (2024) to 4.435 MW (2031),  26% CAGR. That’s not incremental growth. That’s a rebalancing of Europe’s capacity map. AI demand: CBRE reports 414 MW AI colocation signings in Europe (first 9 months 2025), with 57% signed in the Nordics. In my article I break it down by country: 🇮🇸 Iceland: bounded scale + connectivity matters 🇳🇴 Norway: campus scale, but execution wins 🇸🇪 Sweden: growth shifts beyond Stockholm 🇫🇮 Finland: “AI-ready” narrative, but sequencing is everything What’s the primary risk you underwrite first in the Nordics: grid delivery date, permitting certainty, or demand conversion at distance?

*Why Data Centers Are Moving North — And Why Antarctica Would Be Perfect* (If It Were Allowed) The AI revolution is not just changing software. It is reshaping geography. As demand for AI computing explodes, data center operators are quietly shifting toward some of the coldest regions on Earth. Not Antarctica—but places very close to it in terms of climate advantages: Norway, Iceland, northern Sweden, Finland, and Alaska. Billions of dollars are already being invested. Why are data centers moving to the Arctic Circle? Because AI has a heat problem. Every AI model, cloud application, and GPU cluster generates enormous amounts of heat that must be removed continuously. Cooling has become one of the largest operating costs for modern data centers. The Arctic offers a simple solution: ✅ Naturally cold temperatures ✅ Free-air cooling for most of the year ✅ Minimal water consumption ✅ Lower energy costs ✅ Reduced carbon footprint Sometimes the best technology solution is simply better geography. The Cooling Math Is Stunning A large conventional data center in hot regions such as Arizona, Texas, Phoenix, Dubai, or parts of India can consume massive quantities of water for cooling. A typical hyperscale facility may use over a billion liters of water annually. By contrast: • Arctic-region facilities often use free-air cooling. • Outside temperatures perform much of the cooling work naturally. • Water consumption drops dramatically. • Energy required for cooling declines significantly. This is not an environmental slogan. It is basic physics. Renewable Energy Changes Everything The second major advantage is energy. Modern AI data centers require enormous electricity supplies. Arctic countries possess some of the world's cleanest and cheapest renewable energy resources: ⚡ Hydroelectric power in Norway ⚡ Geothermal energy in Iceland ⚡ Hydropower in Sweden and Finland ⚡ Emerging renewable capacity in Alaska This combination creates a powerful economic advantage: Lower electricity costs + lower cooling costs = lower cost per AI computation. Real Projects Already Operating Nscale's Glomfjord Data Center in Norway's Arctic Circle: • Powered by 100% renewable energy • 30 MW operational capacity • Expandable to 60 MW In Iceland, Nscale's Keflavik facility is already hosting thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs powered by geothermal and hydroelectric energy. This is no longer a future vision. The infrastructure is already live. Why Not Antarctica? On paper, Antarctica would be the ultimate location. ✔ Extreme cold ✔ Natural cooling ✔ Vast open space ✔ Potentially near-zero cooling costs However, Antarctica is protected by the Antarctic Treaty System, which prohibits commercial industrial development, resource extraction, and large-scale commercial infrastructure projects. The world has collectively agreed that Antarctica should remain a scientific preserve rather than an industrial zone. As a result, companies are focusing on sub-Arctic regions

Almost everyone talks about AI, density, and the next generation of compute. Very few people are talking about where these future data centers will actually live and why location strategy may become just as important as the technology itself. As AI workloads continue pushing power and cooling demands higher, I think the next evolution of data centers will be driven by a combination of • Access to large power capacity • Reliable water or alternative cooling strategies • Lower environmental risk • Fiber density and connectivity • Renewable energy availability • Speed to deploy and scale Some future concepts that are technically realistic 🌊 Offshore or coastal data center campuses for natural cooling opportunities 🌵 Desert campuses using closed loop liquid cooling and solar integration 🌽 Modular edge campuses near population growth corridors ⚡ Nuclear supported or energy adjacent campuses for long term power stability 🏭 Prefabricated micro campuses designed for rapid deployment Potential regions that stand out Arizona – solar, land availability, continued hyperscale growth Texas – power infrastructure and large scale expansion opportunities Virginia – fiber density and existing ecosystem Nevada – land and renewable energy potential Washington and Oregon – cooler climates and hydro resources Midwest regions – central location and available expansion space The future of data centers may not simply be bigger facilities. It may be smarter placement, stronger infrastructure strategy, and building around long term sustainability. Curious where others think the next major wave of data center growth happens. #DataCenters #AIInfrastructure #DigitalInfrastructure #EdgeComputing #Hyperscale #Telecom #CloudComputing #FutureTech #Infrastructure #DataCenterDesign

Most people are talking about data centers. Our team at Midwest CRE Advisors is actually working them. There are two ways I'm engaged in the Kansas City data center market right now and they couldn't be more different. 1️⃣ Greenfield Sites & the Power Problem Finding raw land for a data center in KC isn't the hard part. The hard part is the utility conversation. How close are you to a substation? What's the available load? What does the interconnection timeline look like with Evergy? Can the site support 20 MW, 50 MW, 75 MW+? Kansas City recently rezoned data centers as industrial facilities, which matters for site selection. But even with the right zoning, the wrong power situation kills a deal before it starts. I'm working with landowners right now who have sites that look ideal on paper, highway access, industrial zoning, right-sized acreage, and my job is to run the utility scenario before anyone wastes time or money. Evergy's pipeline is already over 15 GW in active agreements. The sites that can plug in fast are worth a premium. The ones that can't? You better know that before you buy. 2️⃣ Conversions & Modular Not every data center gets built from the ground up. I'm also engaged on the conversion side, existing industrial and flex buildings that have the bones to become edge or modular data center deployments. Floor load. Clear height. Power access. Fiber proximity. Cooling options. The modular data center market is projected to grow at 17.7% CAGR and a lot of that growth isn't in brand-new hyperscale campuses. It's in adaptive reuse and modular deployments that can be stood up faster, closer to the edge, at lower capital cost. Kansas City's central geography, affordable power rates, and available industrial inventory make it one of the better-positioned markets in the country for this type of deployment. If you have land, a building, or capital that belongs in this conversation, reach out. This market is moving fast and the window for early positioning is closing. 📍 Kansas City