Facebook parent Meta is spending $1 billion to more than double the size of a data center under construction in DeKalb to nearly 2.4 million square feet, putting the college town west of Chicago at the center of its metaverse.
Yahoo! reports that the data center is slated to open next year and will make the DeKalb data center one of Meta's largest facilities and an integral part of it's plans to expand its social media platforms into an immersive virtual reality experience according to Meta spokesman Tom Parnell.
The five-building complex will be filled with servers and other computing equipment that will create 200 jobs and power everything from Facebook posts to Instagram photos as one of 17 Meta data centers across the U.S.
Meta's data centers supply the massive computing power needed to share information and connect users on the evolving social media platforms. The company has 14 data centers operating in the U.S. with three under construction.
The Real Deal states that Meta's expansion makes the DeKalb facility one of the company's largest data centers. It will dwarf the biggest in Illinois, the 1.2 million square foot Digital Realty campus in Franklin Park. It also surpasses the $2 billion, 1.7 million square foot Cloud HQ data center being planned in Mount Prospect on the former United Airlines campus, which will lease to other companies instead of being owner-occupied like Meta's facility in DeKalb.
Projects such as Cloud HQ and the Prime Data Center underway in Elk Grove won't be able to offer leases until 2024 at the earliest and won't hit their full capacities for eight to 10 years.
David Horowitz of T5 Data Centers stated that three months ago, there was roughly 60 megawatts of available turnkey capacity in the Chicagoland area amongst 10 data center providers, but there are now four megawatts. His company also operates an asset in Elk Grove Village which is a hotspot for data centers. A local investor quadrupled a $39 million land investment in four years on deals that included a sale to Microsoft for a big data center.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the DeKalb data center originally broke ground in 2020, starting with two buildings that are now 70% complete. Construction on the three additional buildings began in January, and the infrastructure buildout at the sprawling 505 acre site is expected to be finished in 2023.
The demand for data centers has been growing in recent years, spurred by the heightened need for cloud technology and remote connectivity during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw work-from-home go mainstream.
The Chicago area is tied with Atlanta as the fourth largest data center market in the world, behind Northern Virginia, Silicon Valley and Singapore according to a new study by Cushman & Wakefield. The study showed the advantages for Chicago are as follows:
- Low cost of land
- Robust development pipeline
- Lower power costs than most large data centers
- Sizable incentives in the Chicago area
In 2019, Illinois created the Data Center Investment Program, offering an exemption from state and local sales and use taxes for companies that invest at least $250 million and create 20 new operational jobs in a data center. The program also requires the data center to be carbon-neutral.
Facebook was granted the data center sales tax exemptions by the state according to Parnell.
As part of the green building requirement, Meta is partnering with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a more sustainable concrete mix for construction of the data center. Meta has also invested in two new wind energy projects in Morgan and DeWitt counties, looking to support the DeKalb data center with 100% renewable energy.
On thing the DeKalb data center won't be processing is facial recognition technology, after Facebook agreed to pay $650 million in a landmark settlement over alleged violations of Illinois' biometric privacy law.
DataBid is currently reporting on this project - Facebook Data Center - DeKalb (0038070620)
