Residents want answers on Coal City data center plan

To some Coal City residents, something simply isn’t adding up.
Nearly two years after plans first surfaced for a massive data center campus, residents continue to question how one of the nation's largest data center developers came to the doorstep of their village and why so many preliminary decisions have moved forward before the public has seen detailed plans.
The corporation behind the proposal, Texas-based Aligned Data Centers, is one of the country's fastest-growing developers of large data centers.
Its proposed Coal City campus would transform approximately 300 acres in the Conesville Industrial Park near Reed Road and Carbon Hill Road into an 11-building data center complex built over the next decade, representing billions of dollars in private investment.
Against that backdrop, residents filled Wednesday night's (July 22) Coal City Village Board meeting, even though the proposed development was not listed on the agenda.
For many, the meeting represented yet another chapter in a debate that has stretched on for nearly two years.
Opponents say they are frustrated that Aligned has yet to submit its Planned Unit Development (PUD) application, detailing company representatives previously indicated the application would be submitted in July.
When the final meeting of the month arrived with no PUD, residents took matters into their own hands.
Mayor David Spesia confirmed the application had not been received by the time of the meeting. Until that occurs, detailed site plans showing building locations, landscaping, traffic patterns, buffering, utility infrastructure, noise mitigation and other site-specific impacts cannot be publicly reviewed.
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