A crowd of over 100 residents filled the community room at Minooka Village Hall Wednesday night to ask questions of Equinix, a company with plans to build a 300-acre data center on Holt Road near Ridge Road.

According to an FAQ handed out to residents who attended the meeting, a data center is a high-tech, warehouse-type building that stores digital information and powers the internet and other digital services.

Parker Hanks, Equinix’s senior director of real estate, said while there has been data center construction specifically because of the demand for artificial intelligence (AI), Equinix has been around longer, and this specific data center isn’t being built solely for that purpose.

However, it can be used for that purpose if that’s what their customer wants.

“We’ve got 10,000 customers from all over the world,” Hanks said. “We don’t know. We’re not building this for a single customer.”

That led to the question at the top of mind for most of the residents. What’s going to happen to their electric bills?

One Minooka resident said their bill has climbed over 50% despite their electricity usage not going up.

That was a concern addressed by ComEd rather than Equinix. Bill Pegel, a project manager with ComEd, said energy bills aren’t going up because of data centers. Instead, Pegel said energy bills are rising thanks to the PJM Interconnection.

According to a Sept. 2 Shaw Media news story, PJM sets rates based on energy trends used to predict how much energy the grid can handle each day.

“What you are seeing on your bill, the cost of delivery of transmission and the cost of delivery of distribution, has not gone up significantly in the past several years,” Pegel said. “The cost of generation has, and that is from Illinois all the way to the east coast, Ohio, Missouri, and all of the different regions. They’re reacting to the same thing.”

Pegel said this data center is a new market moving into ComEd’s territory, which means more investment from both ComEd and from Equinix.

Hanks said Minooka residents will benefit from Equinix paying both a utility tax and property taxes.

There were also concerns expressed over water usage.

Design Director Jeremy Mickler said the project will be air-cooled rather than water-cooled, so the site’s daily water use will be in line with an equivalently sized office building. Any water used in the data center will be used on a closed loop.

Residents also were concerned over the noise. According to the FAQ, the building will have sound shrouds on exterior equipment, screen walls and natural plantings to dampen the noise.

Minooka Village Administrator Dan Duffy said it’s estimated that this project will generate up to $7 million in taxes over a 10-year period once it’s up and running, with the expectation that it generates $3 million within its first five years.

According to the FAQ, construction workers will start moving dirt sometime near the end of 2025, and construction will begin in 2027 with the intention of opening in 2031.