Good evening.

I would like to call the planning and zoning commission meeting of September 3rd, 2025 to order.

All right, thank you, and let's get started.

Secretary Wright, please conduct rule call.

Abu Burger, here Bonzel.

Here.

Costa Gnoly?

Here.

Namas?

Here.

McDaniel?

Here.

Wright is here.

And Robins.

Here.

Madam Chair, we have a quorum.

Thank you.

The first order of business tonight is the public forum.

During the public forum, members of the public have the opportunity to address the Planning and Zoning Commission on issues which are not part of tonight's agenda.

Please keep your comments limited to three minutes.

Also for the sake of those in attendance, please refrain from clapping or shouting.

Also, in response to comments made by any speaker.

Secretary Wright, do we have anyone signed up under public forum?

No one for public forum.

Great, thank you.

Our next order of business is public hearings.

For each hearing, we will begin with a staff presentation and introduction, followed by the petitioner's presentation.

We will then take public testimony to ensure that we have an opportunity to hear from each person wishing to speak.

Please keep your comments specific to the request under consideration and try to avoid repetitive comments.

Also, for the sake of all of those in attendance, please refrain from clapping, shouting, in response to comments made by any speaker.

Following the public testimony, the petitioner will provide closing remarks just prior to the closure of the public hearing.

No further public testimony will be taken after the petitioner begins their closing remarks or during the planning and zoning commission's deliberation.

I will now swear in any of the members of the public wishing to speak.

For those who wish to provide testimony, please stand up.

Please raise your right hand and respond.

I do.

I swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

Thank you.

The first case on tonight's agenda is DEV-0057-2025, 1960 Lucent Lane, CARES Critical Data Centers.

First will be the staff's presentation filed by the petitioner's presentation.

After the petitioner's presentation, we will hear from the members of the public who would like to speak on the case.

For the sake of time, if your comments are similar to those already shared, you may simply state that you agree with the comments shared by previous speakers.

The planning and zoning bylaws state that these meetings conclude at 11 p.m.

Unless the meeting is extended by a vote by the commission.

If any members of the public do not get to speak tonight when the meeting adjourns, they may return on the October 15th meeting and sign up to provide testimony then.

Whether or not all members of the public are heard tonight, the public hearing will not be closed and will be continued to the October 15th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, where any remaining public testimony and the commissioner's deliberation will occur.

Now, Sarah Sarah Kapensky from staff will present the case.

Thank you and good evening.

Sarah Kapinski with the city's planning services team.

The subject property for the case before you consists of approximately 40 acres located at 1960 Lucent Lane.

The property's zoned ORI office research and light industry district and is located within the city's I-88 Deal Road Corridor.

The petitioner proposes development of two data centers on the property.

The project is planned to be constructed in phases with the West Data Center being built first and the East Data Center and a utility substation being constructed in the future, depending on the availability of necessary utility infrastructure.

No zoning changes are being requested with the petitioner's proposal.

Rather, the petitioner requests approval of a conditional use for two data center buildings and associated fence and parking variances.

In 2023, the city amended the ORI district's regulations and one of the approved changes classified data centers as a conditional use.

Required conditions for conditional uses were also identified to promote review of property location, anticipated truck traffic and parking generation, roadway capacities, site access, visibility of the property, building design, and other criteria determined necessary.

During staff's review of the petitioner's proposal and subject to the conditions noted in the report, staff finds the proposed data centers address the required conditions outlined in the ORI zoning district regulations, and that phase one can be adequately served by public utilities and services, including sufficient capacity available on the city's electric infrastructure.

As a result, staff recommends approval of phase one, the Western Data Center Building and its associated parking and fencing variances.

We recommend that phase two be required to submit a new conditional use application at a future date once adequate electrical power is available and any unforeseen issues that may arise with phase one have been addressed.

In response to comments received, one element staff recommends be further evaluated as noise to ensure the proposal complies with the city's performance standards.

The city is in the process of securing a third party sound engineer to review the petitioner's noise impact assessment, verify the data center campus will operate in compliance with city regulations, and determine if any additional improvements are recommended to mitigate potential noise impacts.

A summary of their independent review and findings will be provided in the public hearing files related to this case.

Accordingly, following the petitioner's presentation and initial public testimony tonight, staff recommends the public hearing be continued to October 15th to allow enough time for the sound engineer to be selected and have adequate time to complete their analysis.

I'd also like to note that a representative from the city's electric utility will be in attendance at the October 15th meeting to answer any questions that arise as a result of public testimony relating to the electric utility and infrastructure.

Tonight we ask that uh the petitioner and public testimony begin prior to continuing the public hearing to October 15th.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Will the petitioner please approach the podium?

Law firm of Rosenov and Whitaker, 445 Jackson Avenue, uh Naperville, Illinois.

Um you see screens?

Not yet.

I mean, they're not on yet.

There you go.

There we go.

Uh I'm here this evening on behalf of CARES Critical Member LLC as a contract purchase of the property commonly known as 1960 Lucent Lane.

Uh we've submitted an application for a conditional use for a data center with variances associated with parking, fencing, and screening of mechanical units.

Our intent this evening is to work through application materials and ultimately substantiate that the development proposal meets the legal standards associated with the relief requested uh for the data center.

I we've we've submitted those materials, staff has reviewed it.

Um, and I think it's those those materials that we've submitted that was the foundation of staff support of the project that was just announced.

Um as we begin to look at slides here.

Uh, the application filed with the city of Naperville is consistent with the city's submittal requirements.

Uh this slide depicts various plans and studies submitted in support of the application and reviewed by city staff and their professional consultants.

Uh while this list is significant, it is certainly not exhaustive of due diligence efforts, which also includes substantial additional activities such as geotechnical investigation, phase one environmental uh investigations, Ellinoi Department of Natural Resources, Eagle Cat Clearance, IHPA clearance, and concurrence from DuPage County that there are no on-site wetlands.

Our presentation this evening will be broken down by subject matter with expert witnesses providing testimony with respect to their subject matter expertise.

I'll begin the presentation with some context and high-level overview of the property and the underlying zoning.

We'll then hear from Brett Rogers.

Brett is a CEI, CIO and head of data centers for CARES Critical.

Brett will speak to the data center market and operational considerations for the project.

Bill Bone, uh, president of Jacob and Hefner and Associates will cover civil engineering issues along with acoustics, the acoustic study that was prepared by his firm.

Michael Worthman from KLOA will discuss the traffic impact study that's been provided and reviewed by staff.

Carl Peterson is here from Gary R.

Weber and Associates, who is responsible for the landscape plan.

David Cornacki of Cornackian Associates will cover site lighting.

We have Guy Toro from Carlson Design Group.

Guy will cover architectural and mechanical design of the data center buildings.

We'll wrap up with a presentation from Aaron Gruen from Groon Plus Gruen and Associates discussing economic and fiscal impacts associated with the project.

I always like talking about some of the history of a property because I think it relates to kind of where we've come from and where we're going.

So the subject property comprises approximately 40 acres located at the northwest corner of Naperville Road and Warrenville Road in the city of Naperville.

In these images, the orange outline represents the boundary of the 40-acre property that's before the commission this evening.

For context, the red outline represents the historical context of what is commonly known as the Lucent or the Nokia property.

The uh the historic Lucent property consists of approximately 175 acres.

The property was originally developed in the mid-1960s, becoming the first large-scale office complex in the I-88 corridor.

The original building visible in the 1978 image consisted of approximately one million square feet.

The second building visible in the 2012 image on the right added another approximately 600,000 square feet and two multi-story parking decks to the consolidated campus.

Um as an office campus, uh, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Uh the campus was uh was originally developed and has historically been utilized as a major research and development facility for telecommunication technology.

Not altogether different from property just down the roy, um, which was developed shortly after this as the BP campus and was also an advanced research and development facility.

Uh through the the 60s into the 70s and 80s, research at the campus was focused on engineering development of electronics, uh, electronic, then digital switching systems associated with telephone service.

More recently, research and development efforts have been focused on 5G, advanced wireless testing, and emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing.

This historical context is critically important because it speaks to the value of the property and the unique attributes that position this property for redevelopment.

The historic research and development operations relied on unique infrastructure at this property, including on-site storage tanks, an on-site electrical substation, uh, communication infrastructure that makes the subject property uniquely positioned for development as a data center, as we'll discuss in more detail this evening.

In 2020, Nokia began the process of repositioning the property.

Uh they filed an application to subdivide the 175-acre campus, ultimately positioning uh repositioning pieces of the campus for redevelopment.

The property was divided into four lots as reflected in this exhibit.

Uh very difficult to read the technical legal document on the left, so we took the liberty of color coding it on the right.

Um, out lot A, which is reflected in blue, is a stormwater detention basin, um which serves the campus overall.

Um, lot one, uh, which is in the bottom here uh in green, uh, is the electrical substation, which is a critical infrastructure component that facilitates the development of the data center at this property.

Uh lot uh lot two is the 40-acre property before the commission this evening that is highlighted in um yellow or orange.

Uh lot three uh is the thousand square foot Nokia office building within which um or is the location of the million square foot um Nokia office building within which Nokia employees have been consolidated.

Lot four consists of uh consists of approximately 67 acres uh that was ultimately rezoned R2 and purchased by Poulty for the development of Naper Commons.

I represented Poulty on the uh zoning approvals for Naper Commons.

Uh, some of the commissioners may remember that case as it was controversial at the time.

Uh, nearby residents objected to the scale of the development, uh the proximity to the forest preserve district, um, and the destruction of uh natural environment.

Um you may recall one resident in particular uh penned a 1960s uh style protest song titled Wooden Houses, uh, which you can find on YouTube still today.

Um zoning of the property.

Um as Sarah mentioned, um, the property is zoned ORI.

This is an image from the city's GIS system uh that shows the current zoning of the property.

Um to the I guess highlighting these.

So Naper Commons is to the to the north and along Weatherby Lane, uh, this area here.

Naper Commons is zoned R2.

Uh the Donata townhomes are located just north of Naper Commons in this area.

Uh they're zoned R3 in the city of Naperville.

Uh both of those residential developments are encumbered with PUDs also.

Uh, however, the remainder of the Nokia campus is zoned ORI.

Um, that is office research and light industry zoning district classification that is consistent with the historic use of the property.

Uh, this historic zoning designation is consistent with other properties that comprise the city's I-88 corridor.

On Warrenville Road, you see the adjacent Chevron building, which is zoned ORI in this location.

Um to the south of Warrenville Road, you see a number of properties that are zoned ORI.

And if you look east to the village of Lyle, we don't have their zoning reflected, but you can see by note that the village of Lyle zoning is office research, which is very comparable to the zoning district in the city of Naperville.

So this property has for the last 60 years been part of a research and development corridor, telecommunications research and development use that we think is absolutely consistent with sort of the redevelopment and repositioning of the property with just what we see as a current brand of telecommunications on the property.

If we look at the city's zoning classifications, we we often talk at a zoning meet zoning hearing about a specific zoning district.

Sometimes we don't take a step back and look at how the code actually works and breaks districts out.

So what we've done here is we've looked at the code and said Naperville has three different land use categories.

They have residence districts, they have business districts, and they have industrial districts.

And I given some of the feedback that we've seen on social media and resident notes in advance of the meeting tonight, I think it's very important to point out that the property is zoned as an industrial district in the city of Naperville and has been for uh a number of decades.

Sarah touched on uh the 2023 amendment to uh the city's ORI district.

Uh this is just a quick image of two pages of that amendment.

Um the amendment uh didn't just add data centers to the ORI district, um, there were really two parts to that uh 2023 amendment.

Um I think the first part was there was some discussion about industrial development of large-scale properties in the in Naperville's corridor.

There was concern about cross-stock buildings and the prevalence of truck traffic that would be driven by typical industrial development.

Um, and so I I think the first thing Naperville accomplished with this 2023 amendment is they sort of curtailed a little bit of the manufacturing industrial development that could happen in could have happened in the ORI district prior to 2023.

Um, what they did is they they basically said if you're going to have a warehouse or manufacturing facility, that can be 50% of your building, but you have must have 50% of the building dedicated to office space.

We don't see a lot of that in the market today, um, so that's not something that is uh common development metric in the industrial world.

Um I think as part of the compensation for that or to accommodate future growth and redevelopment in the ORI corridor, uh, the city looked at what other uses might be compatible in that industrial district.

And you can see highlighted or circled in orange on the right-hand page that the first conditional use now listed in the ORI district is in fact data centers.

So I think that's it it's very telling that as recent as two years ago, um, city staff studied data centers, considered specifically where data centers should be located in the city, chose the ORI zoning district, but then chose also to say that it would be conditional use requiring specific evaluation of the conditions associated with it, which is why we're here today.

Um, I would also point out that this is the only zoning district in which data centers are permitted.

So if I was to go, if I was to go back a slide and look at any of the business districts or any of the other industrial districts, I would specifically call out for the commission that a data center is not permitted in any of those districts.

Um just a little detail on the request before the commission this evening.

Um Sarah mentioned the application before the commission is a conditional use in the existing ORI zoning district.

I want to be very clear that the application applies only to the 40-acre property located at the corner of Naperville Road in Warrenville Road.

When I look at comments, people seem to suggest that we're building on the forest preserve district property, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

Office building and associated parking structures that were previously located on the property, again comprising over approximately 600,000 square feet of space, have been demolished, effectively positioning the property for redevelopment.

We've submitted a petition with findings of fact that substantiate the proposed development satisfies the legal standards for granting a conditional use.

We have three variances that are requested, just touching on those real quickly.

We were seek to reduce the required parking from 211 spaces per building to 60 spaces per building.

So when the city added uh data centers as a conditional use in 2023, they didn't revisit and consider what parking allocations should be.

Um so we're we're required to provide parking on a basic industrial allocation.

That's overbuilding parking.

Um, what we're doing in this case is we're saying we only want to build 60 spaces, but we will plan comprehensively on the site to land bank, additional parking in order to substantiate the the required number of spaces if they should be needed in the future.

By limiting physical construction of excess parking supply, we limit unnecessary impervious areas and are able to establish some additional native habitat as we'll be discussed this evening.

Uh second variance is for an equipment yard screen wall.

Uh, we are seeking a variance to increase the height of the screen wall from 15 feet to 22 feet.

Um, as Guy Terrell will touch on in his presentation, the additional height will allow full screening of mechanical units located behind the buildings.

Um, and lastly, um, we're seeking a variance to increase the height of a security fence around the future phase two substation.

Um, the request is all about safety, that is electrical mechanical equipment that is dangerous.

We want to make sure that it does not uh become an attractive nuisance, and so the security fence is uh standard protocol for that type of infrastructure.

Um consultants are going to provide some specific detail on the plan this evening, but I do I did want to provide some quick high-level overview of the proposal by way of orientation.

Um, you see Warrenville War Warrenville Road forms the southern boundary of the subject property.

Naperville Road forms the eastern boundary of the subject property.

Weatherby Lane to the northeast, umatherby Lane is here, um, which was dedicated as part of the development of Naper Commons.

Um, Lucent Lane and Freedom Drive is to the west, uh, that is here.

So it's Lucent Lane north of Warrenville Road, it is Freedom Drive south of Warrenville Road.

Um, I would note that Freedom Drive is the I-88 interchange providing access east to the city.

Um I would point out the Indian Hill substation is located here.

That is city-owned infrastructure.

I would call out that while it looks like a building here, um, it's not actually an enclosed building.

There's a small section of that structure that is fully enclosed with a roof.

Um, but if you look at Google Earth, and you'll probably see some images throughout the presentation, you'll see that the transformers and electrical equipment in that yard is actually open to the sky and has large screen walls around it, um, similar to the fashion that we're trying to increase screen walls and make sure we have a safe environment on our proposed development.

Um the staff report uh in the staff report and our presentation tonight will generally be referring to the project as two phases.

Um each building of the project is a separate phase.

Um the western building is phase one, phase two is then the eastern building.

Um, along with the phase two building, we're holding space for an additional substation if required.

Um so you can see phase one building here, phase two building here, um, and substation sort of between the buildings.

Um when I look at the phase one building, I would call out that the phase one building can be broken into sub-phases.

Uh, that is phase one A and phase one B.

Um, that was contemplated as part of the consideration when we were working with the city of Naperville on possible uh electric supply and timing issues.

Um, all ingress and egress will occur via Lucent Lane.

Um, we'll have uh some consultants get into this in greater detail, but I I want to make sure we repeat it a couple of times because I think it's an important point.

Um, all visitors to all visitors and employees to the campus will enter from the south off of Lucent Lane.

Um, all deliveries will occur off of Lucent Lane to the north.

While we do have a single point of access to Weatherby Lane, uh the intent is that is restricted emergency access only.

Um, this was a strategic uh strategic strategic decision on our part with a specific goal of trying to provide some additional separation between the commercial industrial land use here and the adjacent residents on Weatherby Lane.

Um I want to point out uh generous setbacks along Warrenville Road and Naperville Road.

Um looking in these areas here, and along the the entire frontage of the property.

Uh, these setbacks were maintained for specific purpose of minimizing disturbance of existing landscape features along Warrenville Road, the setback to the South Drive Isle.

So from Warrenville Road to the area where we see parking supply in here is nearly 300 feet along Naperville Road here.

The setback is almost 235 feet.

So significant separation between the proposed land use and the adjacent roadways.

Along Weatherby Lane, a new 140 foot buffer yard is proposed.

So we're looking along Weatherby Lane here, and you see substantial 140 foot buffer from the from the right of way line to the edge of this drive aisle.

As part of the phase one development, this buffer yard will be improved with an approximately eight foot berm and associated landscaping.

Carl will touch on landscape features in these setback areas during this presentation.

So that landscape berm goes in with phase one as soon as we're able to obtain a permit for this project.

Phase two, maybe two years, maybe 10 years down the road.

But the the goal is to have the landscaping and the berm there as a transition point on an immediate basis.

One final piece of background before I turn it over to some of our expert witnesses this evening.

In signing legislation for the incentive program, Governor Pritzker was quoted as saying, and it's written on the right hand side there.

In today's world, data centers are as critical a part of our infrastructure as our roads, trains, and schools.

With this legislation I signed into law, we're welcoming a surge in economic development, labor income, and good union jobs to Illinois, and not just here in the established market of Chicago, but across the whole state.

The program has been a resounding success with data centers driving fiscal support of state and local governments to the tune of 1.85 billion billion with a B dollars in 2023.

So we're excited about the proposal.

We'll start with Brett Rogers, who is the CEO and head of data centers for CARES Critical.

Brett's gonna talk a little bit about the data center market and specifically the operations of the facility here.

Thanks, Russ.

Brett Rogers with CARES Critical, 3333 Warrenville Road, Naperville.

As Russ said, I'm gonna talk a little bit about our project and try to provide a little bit of context.

Data centers are something that I've been doing for 25 years, but it's only been in the last three or four that we've seen interest that we're seeing now in the industry.

I think it's important for us to talk about where we sit.

So much of the public discourse around data centers is tied to AI data centers or hyperscale cloud data centers, very, very large facilities.

What we're proposing, we'd call a co-location data center or a metro data center.

These tend to be a little bit smaller, tend to be highly networked, and that's kind of why we like this site so much.

There's uh quite a bit of fiber optic cable tied to the original Lucent campus.

And so these data centers generally are multi-tenanted, and they connect a lot of the workloads that are occurring in in these larger hyperscale cloud or AI data centers.

So in the intent of establishing some context, each of our data centers is planned at 36 megawatts, so 72 megawatts total between the two buildings.

A hyperscale uh data center is probably in the 80 to 100 megawatt per building range at this point, and campuses are routinely 600 megawatts to a gigawatt, a thousand megawatts.

Similarly, AI data centers are often 160 to 240 megawatts per building, and campuses routinely exceeding one gigawatt.

So the market that we're selling to is obviously a little bit different than what you might read about in the papers around these mega projects.

Um again, this is likely to be a multi-tenanted building, and we expect we'll have enterprises, banks, um, insurance agencies, other groups like that that maintain their own IT infrastructure in the space.

Um there's ecosystem players, so these are people that are tangential to the data center industry.

They're selling security services, selling connectivity services, and then of course, we do expect hyperscale users, although very different than what we would talk about when you're thinking about a cloud campus or an AI campus.

These are more network-intensive workloads that manage and route uh traffic to those core assets.

And so this just provides a little bit of a sample of the types of tenants we might have in this facility.

Um we can't you know say, hey, it's gonna be this specific tenant because project's not approved yet.

We're working with you on that.

Um after approval, these are the groups that we would be marketing to.

Um again, kind of a little bit of context around the square footage, and and Russ went over this.

I think this uh, you know, these square footages, these are two-story buildings, so we're talking maybe a hundred thousand square foot development footprint per each.

These are not the million square foot mega facilities that we talk about.

Um there's always the the context of jobs, and and so jobs can be a double-edged sword in the data center industry.

We don't create a lot of jobs like a manufacturing facility would, but at the same time, we're not creating the public burden of traffic and and and school system seats and everything else that comes with that, but we are creating a really uh nice pool of well-paying jobs that really serve a really good cross-section of the community.

So if we think about the jobs that are created in these sorts of facilities, and these numbers focus primarily on building one or only on building one.

There's a core management group, and these tend to be degreed or certified jobs that are running and managing the day-to-day operations of the space.

Um, there's both facility and IT technicians, so a lot of these are unionized jobs, particularly on the facility side.

So electricians, mechanics that are helping to operate the space.

Um these are staffed seven by 24, 365 days a year.

So even on Christmas Eve, somebody will be in the facility making sure that that it's operating as intended.

And then these are secure facilities as Russ mentioned.

So there'll be a 7x24 security team as well.

Um so if we think about sort of the the job mix, we're talking, you know, probably 65 to 75 jobs created across the first building, spread across three shifts, uh, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Um I'm gonna turn it over to our consultants now to talk more about how we thought about this project and some of the accommodations we've made to minimize impact on the locality.

And we'll start with Bill Bone, who's supporting our our land use and civil engineering planning.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is William Bone, 1333 uh Butterfield in uh Downers Grove, Illinois.

Uh I'm the president and one of the owners of Jacob and Hefner Associates.

Um I have a bachelor's of science in civil engineering from the Southern Illinois University.

Uh I've been practicing uh engineering for 26 years, uh civil engineering design and permitting for 26 years, and I've been a licensed professional engineer in the state of Illinois since 2004.

Uh our firm, including my uh 26 years at the firm, our bread and butter's been data center development, industrial development, and commercial development.

So this is definitely in our wheelhouse.

Uh first walk you through a little bit of the property overview, and I know Russ uh discussed a lot of this, but some of it's it's it's important, so we're uh gonna double up on it a bit.

Uh the site is outlined in red, bounded to the south by Warrenville Road, east by Naperville Road.

Um, as you can see, the the existing uh Lucent building that has uh been demolished recently is here with a large parking field in the front, large multi-story parking garage here and parking garage here.

The existing site or the pre-existing site got its access off of both Lucent Lane and Weatherby Lane.

They have two access points off of Weatherby and three off of Lucent Lane.

Uh it's it's again an uh uh important to note that uh this uh property was part of the initial development of the I8A corridor uh with a 60-year-plus history of telecommunications at RD use, and we're just the next uh evolution of that same use.

Uh the exit the Lucent office building that was demolished had over 2,000 parking spaces uh before it was demolished.

As far as natural resources go, we did uh complete a consultation with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Um it's a process that we go through pretty much on every project, regardless if it's downtown city of Chicago or uh out in Navorville.

And uh the I the Illinois Department of Natural Resources did come back and and after their review stated that they have no concerns with the project, other than uh that we should limit tree removal to between August 16th and April 30th.

So uh, as we sit here today, we're already within that window, and we would intend to remove any trees, and we'll talk about tree removal uh in a little bit.

Most of the trees that would be removed are within that parking field, so they're all they're all planted as part of the loosen project, but they would be removed between August 16th and April 30th.

We have also completed a historic and archaeological review with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and we have full clearance from them that there are the no archaeological or historic relics on the site, and we have provided that to the city of Naperville staff.

Site plan.

Except for, you know, if there's in the event of emergency, the city of Naperville life safety staff will have a key to get through that gate and enter in that access point if they need to.

Parking building one, we've got 60 spaces that run along the south and kind of east side of the office component of the building.

Kind of just mirror image for phase two.

The southwest portion and kind of southeast here is where the 60 parking spaces are.

We are proposing to land bank 114 spaces.

So what does that mean?

We're gonna set that that property up there.

It's it's gonna be completely landscaped and green for now.

Uh but all the stormwater management, all the utilities will be designed, planned for, so such that if we need the additional parking at that time, we can add that uh that land bank parking in uh immediately.

Once again, we'll mention the eight-foot high berm that runs the length from our emergency access point all the way down the Naperville Road that will be installed on day one and landscaped on day one with the phase one building.

Setback exhibit.

This is really tough to read, but I'll just kind of go through some key setbacks, and I know Russ touched on them, so I'll quickly get through them.

Uh with due to our building height with the ORI zoning district, we're required a 35-foot uh setback from a date adjacent roadway.

So that would be Naperville Road, Warrenville Road, and Weatherby.

Um the closest we our our phase one building gets to Warrenville Road is 305 feet, so far exceeding the 35 feet.

Closest phase two building gets to Naperville Road is 267 feet, again, far exceeding the 35 feet, and we uh fit the phase two building.

The closest it gets to Weatherby, uh that would be our uh the west right-of-way line of weatherby is 159 feet.

So again, greatly exceeding the 35 feet.

We also have a 25-foot required interior and rear property line setback, and all of the equipment yards, the two equipment yards for each building will be set back in excess of 100 feet, so certainly uh greater than the 25.

In addition to the the city mandated uh setbacks, uh, we just want to mention you know some key kind of distances from from neighboring uh homes.

Um here at the southwest uh the building one, the west side of building one, we get the closest we get to uh to a neighbor is about 418 feet, and and it ranges from 418 to about 837 feet away from that northwest corner of building one.

As far as building two goes, uh the closest we get to the adjacent town homes is 249 feet approximately from the northeast corner and three uh I'm sorry, 243 from the southeast corner.

So we have uh ample setbacks from the adjacent uh residences, and we we far exceed the setbacks that is required that are required by the city of Naperville.

Quickly go through water and sewer.

Uh because this is an art, you know, pre-developed site that has a very robust infrastructure already, as is uh Brett kind of touched on.

Um so water and sewer is no different.

There is already a uh a network of existing water main throughout the campus.

Uh we will be removing some of it uh within our property that that is in conflict with the building location and and certainly um uh replacing it with with brand new uh state-of-the-art water main.

So the existing uh water main here, we've got a 12-inch that runs kind of you know parallel to Weather B, but but outside of the right-of-way of weather bee, we've got another 12-inch that ties into the 12-inch along Naperville Road and runs up and then over.

Uh and previously it kind of cut through where building one is gonna be and tied into uh the substation and then ties in in the Nokia building.

The um the solid blue line is the proposed water main.

So we will be connecting to the Weatherby water main and looping the entire site.

So we're looping both buildings.

Uh, that provides fire hydrant coverage, uh obviously water service for each uh the buildings and also provides uh a source of a redundant source of water.

Um our proposed water main is going to be 12 inches in diameter.

Uh it's it's important to note that that is mainly driven by fire suppression and not daily water usage, as our daily water usage is minimal.

Uh as far as sanitary sewer goes, there's an existing very near this uh existing 12-inch water main.

There is a 12-inch sanitary sewer that serves the existing Nokia building and also served the old Lucent building that is no longer there.

We'll be connecting to that with an eight-inch sewer running it parallel to this east face of building two, and then over to the southeast corner of building one, thereby serving uh sanitary service for both buildings one and two.

We're working with the Dubage County um uh sanitary on that uh since they own uh the water treatment plant and the sanitary sewer.

Stormwater management's always a very important uh aspect of any project.

This is no different.

Uh this project, as you're probably all well aware, is uh regulated by the DuPage County Countywide Stormwater Management Ordinance, uh latest version of September of 2022.

Um since the project's gonna be done in phases.

The first phase is actually a reduction of 6.8 acres of impervious area from the Lucent campus that is was demolished.

Uh so we're actually reducing total impervious area by 6.8 acres.

Uh that's a pretty significant reduction.

Due to that uh and and the DuPage County ordinance, we are not required to provide any additional detention because the large existing detention basin at the corner of Naperville and Warrenville Road is sized for you know the the overall loosen project that was demolished, has plenty of capacity within it.

We will, however, though, be constructing with the first phase a rain garden uh to the north of building one.

Um and that will certainly meet the uh requirements of the DuPage County ordinance with with respect to stormwater best management practices.

So uh a significant amount of our storm router runoff from phase one will be directed to the rain garden where that will treat the stormwater runoff before then it is directed to the detention basin where it will detain it before it releases it downstream.

At full build out of everything you guys see on the screen right now, uh we will be adding impervious area.

It's a very minor add of four percent impervious area from what was out there with the Lucent campus.

Due to that and the DePage County ordinance, additional detention volume will be required at that time.

And our plan is to make minor modifications to the existing detention basin.

It's it's very large to begin with.

We just need to regrade some of the side slopes, and we'll we'll be able to provide uh enough detention for that 4% increase.

And at that time, we will update the rainfall data that is used for the stormwater modeling to uh bulletin 75.

As well as uh same as phase one, phase two, we will be installing a rain garden uh again on the north kind of northwest side of phase two.

That's about the same size as the phase one rain garden, half acre.

Once again, it'll treat stormwater runoff from phase two and then uh directed to the detention basin where it will be temporarily detained before the water goes downstream.

And with that, I'll end on the civil engineering and turn it over to Michael Worthman from Cloda to address traffic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh good evening.

Uh, my name's Michael Worthman.

I'm a principal with the firm of Kenneth Lingren, O'Hara Bune Inc.

Um, we are a traffic and transportation engineering firm out of Rosemont, Illinois.

Uh I've been practicing now, I hate to say, for 36 years, uh, since graduating with a bachelor's in science and civil engineering.

Um I'm a registered professional engineer in the state of Illinois and a certified professional traffic operations engineer or PTOE.

Uh I've worked on multiple projects uh in the city of Naperville, uh, both for private developers as well as for the city and the park district, and have significant experience working on data centers.

Hope I do this right.

No, we already did that.

Sorry.

Um Russ and Bill have stolen a lot of what I was gonna say, but we'll just go through it quickly.

Um, as you've heard, the data center will consist of two buildings totaling about 422,500 square feet that will be developed over two phases.

Uh we'll have approximately 120 surface parking spaces and 114 land bank spaces for a total of 234.

And I think an important component of this, and what you've heard is uh the data center will be replacing the former office building that totaled approximately 516,000 square feet and had over 2,000 uh parking spaces.

You've heard about the access.

Uh access will be provided via three access drives, uh, two on loosen lane, uh, the south will be for employees uh and visitors, uh, the north drive will be for deliveries and will be gated, and the weather be access drive uh will be for emergencies only and will be gated as Russ indicated.

Uh the purpose of this uh was to uh push that traffic onto Lucent Lane and minimize the impact on the neighbors to the north and the east.

Um it's also important to note that uh with the development uh an existing access drive, one access drive will be eliminated on Lucent Lane, and one will be eliminated on Weatherby Lane.

Regarding the roadway system, uh the site is uh served via two major arterial roads uh serving the I-88 corridor as well as the I-88 Naperville Road Interchange located directly south of the site.

Uh both Naperville Road and Willow Warrenville Road, excuse me, are both high capacity arterial roadways that carry between 16,000 and 24,000 vehicles per day.

Um all the access to the data center will be provided via the Warrenville Road, Lucent Lane, Freedom Drive intersection.

Uh, this is a high capacity signalized intersection uh with direct access to and from the tollway.

Uh it's got two lanes in each direction on all approaches, uh dual left turn lanes, separate right turn lane, so very high capacity uh intersection, and the intersection has sufficient reverse reserve capacity to accommodate the traffic that will be generated uh by the data center.

Uh speaking of the traffic to be generated by the data center, um from a traffic standpoint, data centers generally have a limited impact on the roadway system uh for several reasons.

Um, they generate a limited volume of total traffic, and more importantly, they generate a very minimal volume of truck traffic, really talking just employee and visitor traffic.

Uh the volume of traffic to be generated by this data center was based on uh national rates uh provided in the ITE trip generation manual, and we also looked at the proposed operation of the facility.

Uh from the uh bottom of the slide in the middle, you can see that the Denner Data Center will generate about 65 total trips during the morning peak hour and 85 in the PM peak.

Uh but more importantly, we compared the volume of traffic that could be generated by uh 500,000 plus office development, which is shown on the top line, and the uh office development uh would generate anywhere from seven and a half to ten times the volume of traffic that the data center will be.

Uh so you can see that the roadway system had been designed to accommodate this office development, and there's more than enough capacity uh to accommodate the traffic that would be generated by the data center.

Uh I will be here for any questions you have, and thank you for the time.

And Carl will be talking next.

Good evening.

I'm Carl Peterson with Girrera Weber Associates.

Um I have a bachelor's environmental science uh for Roosevelt University.

28 years working uh providing an ecological consulting services to landscape architects, land planners, civil engineers.

I manage a team of land planners, landscape designers, and natural resource consultants that work in both the public and private sectors.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about the existing landscape.

This is a unique opportunity in the development world.

Uh at the corner of Naperville and Warrenville Road, we have the the large detention area that Bill Bones spoke of.

We also have a at the corner of Warrenville and Lucent Lane, a grove of existing trees, um, many of which are mature oaks and hickories.

The detention areas naturalized, and that entire area, which is somewhere between 10 and 11 acres is going to be preserved and untouched.

You can see here the uh I'm not sure how here we go.

The loosened building, which has been demoed.

If we switch to the uh current site plan, you can see that we're essentially operating within the exact same footprint, and we are preserving all of the existing setbacks along the roads.

Weather B Lane, Naperville Road, and Warrenville Road.

And I just wanted to show some some quick videos of what these roads look like and what what they'll continue to look like in the future.

It's pretty fast, but along Warrenville, you can see the mature trees, the turf right-of-way, and herbaceous native vegetation within the existing detention area, and that is essentially going to stay the same with the data center being behind it.

On Neperville Road, you do not have the mature trees, but you have a mature shrubs, the basis of vegetation, the turf right-of-way.

We will be adding some parkway trees along here as part of the landscape plan.

But most of that vista that you see is exactly what you're gonna see when uh the project is done.

And weatherby lane.

You have the mature trees in the distance, um, parkway trees that have been planted as part of the poultry development that are established now, and the the what will be an emergency access into the data center in the future.

So the berm that has been spoken of along Weatherby Lane.

We have a over 140 foot uh set back there that is existing.

Um it will be improved.

The existing parkway trees will be remained will remain.

We're adding a few trees along the parkway, then behind the parkway, we're creating a layering effect with ornamental trees at the at the base of the proposed eight-foot berm, and then on the berm, we're planting eight-foot tall evergreen trees, and right behind the those evergreen trees, and to the I guess I would call it the east or southeast, um, within that right-of-way over uh 28 additional deciduous trees to sort of augment and reflect the grove of trees on the um other side.

So it's a layering effect.

We're trying to create a natural look over time, and I'll show you a picture of what I think that will look like in the future.

Um, in addition to the trees I just spoke of, the majority of this landscape plan is going to be native vegetation.

The rain gardens are gonna have deep-rooted native vegetation, wildflowers, grasses.

Um the land bank parking is going to be a prairie area.

Um whether that parking will ever be needed in the future is is unknown, but it really makes a nice transition between the preserved natural area that we have along the major roadways and into the campus.

So the whole site is is going to essentially be a almost have a forest preserve like appeal around the the buildings, which actually operate in the same footprint of the existing Lucent building.

These are the pictures of actual rain gardens in uh a commercial setting.

Um in June, we have a lot of blooms in fall and winter, the September picture.

We still have you know the structure, we've lost all of the blooms.

There's some winter interest and some functional value there from a study standpoint and from a stormwire management standpoint.

And back to the berm.

This is a picture of a berm planted at Aurora Business Center along Iola Road.

The uh when the berm first goes in with the eight-foot-tall trees and the new parkway trees.

Uh it looks like the picture on the left.

And 10 years later, this particular berm looks like the picture on the right.

So it's a substantial screening.

Um, there's actually a building behind there that you can barely see.

Um, but that is it gives an example of the functionality of the eight foot berm and our planting approach.

And I'll turn it over to David Cornacki.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, my name's David Cornacki from Cornack and Associates.

I have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Wisconsin Plathville.

I've been an electrical engineer since uh 1991 and a PE since uh 1996.

Uh I have done over 3400 uh site lighting photometric plans in my career uh for for this type of project.

Um this uh slide here represents the existing lighting out at the site.

Uh it is uh high pressure sodium, it's the that orange light that you see in certain projects.

This is old technology, it uh uses reflectors to bounce the light all over the place.

It is very inefficient.

Uh these fixtures that you see here, four fixtures on a pole.

Uh they are 500 watts to a thousand watts each fixture, and uh very inefficient.

They create a big bright spot underneath the underneath the pole, and then uh you know, bounce the light everywhere, so it's very glary uh type of lighting.

Uh this was typical design for back when these fixtures were put in, uh, but we are going to use uh new LED fixtures.

These fixtures are very efficient, uh they are dark sky compliant.

We will have single-headed poles instead of the four-headed poles, and uh these single-headed poles will have a hundred and twenty-five watt fixture in lieu of the uh 500 to 1000 watt fixtures on the current poles.

The uh photometric plan here, uh very hard to read in this in this uh slide, but basically what this is showing us is that we meet all of the site lighting standards uh for Naperville and for the IES Society, which is the illuminating illuminating engineering society of North America.

All of those requirements are met as well for this type of site lighting.

Lighting at the property line uh is less than one foot than less than 0.1 foot candles.

Uh the Naperville requirement is 0.5 foot candles at the property line.

Uh for reference to give you a reference on how much light that is.

A full moon is 0.2 foot candles.

So we're less than a full moon at the property line.

Also, each fixture is equipped with a photo cell and motion detector.

Uh it will dim the lights to 33% if no motion is detected in the uh parking lot.

So when there's no activity in the parking lot, the lights will dim, dim down to 33%.

Um the fixtures themselves, they have a bug rating.

Uh bug rating stands for backlight, up light, and glare.

Uh typical fixtures for this type of facility have a rating between three and five.

Um design is 202.

What 202 represents is the backlight is limited to two, where typical is between three and five.

The up light is zero.

That's how we get the dark sky compliant, and the glare is at two, which typical glare for these types of fixtures is between three and five.

That is all I have.

Turn it over.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Guy Toro, Vice President of Carlston Design Group.

We're the architects for the project.

I received my degree from the University of Notre Dame.

I hold a certificate with the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

I'm registered in 23 states, including Illinois, and I have approximately 30 years designing data centers.

And I operate it backwards.

So the project for Naperville, the site is masterplanned for two buildings.

The buildings are a mirror image of each other.

They're approximately 211,000 square feet each.

Our project is phase one, and it's broken into phase 1A and phase 1B.

Phase 1A is 145,000 square foot construction, and phase B will be the additional 66,000 square feet to complete the total 211,000 square foot building.

Our building height is just under 57 feet.

Code allows on that site a building of a height of 100 feet.

For reference, the former Lucent building was approximately 80 feet tall and 500,000 square feet in size.

The block diagram shown in the illustration indicates the major components of the data center, that being the equipment yard in yellow, the data halls in blue, and the support and administration space in green.

The equipment yard houses generators, electrical switch gear, and transformers that support the building.

And the data center proper houses the data halls and the mechanical and electrical equipment rooms that provide power and cooling out to those halls.

Facility support and administrative space has offices for the tenant and operations, shipping receiving area, and additional support space to take care of the day-to-day operation of the facility.

When we look at how the building comes together, the major elements are the data center proper, which is the four data halls.

It's cladded in pre-cast concrete panels with accent bands that work to break up that mass, give us a location and an organization for the glazing, and to reduce the scale.

We pulled the stair towers forward to express a vertical element of interest on that facade and cladded it with architectural metal panels and glass.

The FSA, the facility's support and administrative building, is a single story structure that wraps those data halls, and it allows us to transition from that two-story mass down to something of a little smaller scale.

It's cladded also in metal panel and glass, and the glass area provides natural light into the office space and also accentuates that corner, which is where entry for staff and visitors is.

Per code from distances of adjacent roadways at an eye level of six feet.

The equipment is supposed to be completely screened.

And so you can see we took different vantage points from those neighboring roads and determined that with the current design that equipment is screened.

We have goals for sustainability for this project.

One way to achieve that is water usage is minimized by the use of air-cooled chillers.

The total project site has 24 chillers.

Those chillers use a closed loop, so no water is open to the environment and is not open to evaporation loss.

Each loop of which we have three has eight chillers attached to it, and the initial fill will be 25,000 gallons of water.

With those three loops, our total water is 75,000 gallons that with limited or no loss.

We have estimated 3% loss just to the normal running of that facility, valves, vents open to the atmosphere, and we have a 2,250 gallon annual usage of water.

For comparison, the US EPA estimates annual household usage at 140,000 gallons a year for a family of four.

So you can see the system is very misery when it comes to the use of water.

Additionally, for sustainability goals, all our mechanical equipment is selected to meet and exceed the ash race standards to assist us in achieving lead achieving lead certification for the project.

We're using LED fixtures throughout the facility for their energy efficiency, and we have a multi-level lighting control system that will monitor for room occupancy as well as daylighting levels.

So in the office area, natural lighting during the day, it will begin to dim the LED fixtures to manage the light level and also reduce energy usage.

We also energy meter the electrical distribution system to monitor and reduce power consumption.

And finally, we're providing provisions for electric vehicle charging in the parking lot.

As part of our goals, we look to source components and materials within 100 miles of the project site.

We currently have identified precast concrete, which will probably only be 25 to 30 miles away, concrete for the site and building, asphalt and landscaping.

And as we move forward in the project, we're looking for opportunities to also source the glazing and roofing locally as well.

Our sustainable goal for this project is lead silver.

What you see on the screen is the scorecard for that process, which we've taken now two passes through to align our design with the intent.

For lead silver, it requires a minimum of 50 points to be obtained by the project across the various categories.

And our first pass, we have identified 50 points, and more importantly, 44 41 additional points that are targeted.

We're bringing a lead consulting agent on board as part of our team, and we'll work to secure more of those points to guarantee lead certification for the building.

Finally, I have a few renderings to show.

This is the view from the southwest, looking from the corner of the building up towards the entry element.

You can see the stair towers that pull forward, wrapped in in metal panel, and with opportunities to introduce glass to the project, also to break up the horizontal nature of a two-story building.

You can see the banding that wraps around and locating windows within that banding, and then a view towards the entry element along a tree-lined drive.

From the southeast corner, you can see the entry.

You can see the impact of the glass for the building and how it accentuates the corner.

We lift the roof element to create a signature there and is a keying in for people to know where to arrive to.

Thank you.

It's me again.

Where staff did concur with the results of the noise assessment.

We do understand that the city is reaching out to an independent third party to review the study, and we welcome working with that.

Uh, the city's consultant answering any questions they may have.

We did prior to submit, or not prior to seminal, but we we also did uh reach out and hire our own third-party acoustic firm, knowing that it was a very sensitive topic, and they reviewed our study and also concurred with it.

And that's hankered environmental that we uh we use to double check our study.

I'll start by walking everybody through the the Naperville noise ordinance.

So the chart on the on the left hand side there is taken directly from Naperville, Illinois code of ordinances 6-14-4.

It's standards table one.

What you have in the left column is the the various land uses throughout the city of Naperville.

The middle column is a time slice that is you know referred to as daytime, so 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

And the right hand column is the nighttime time slice, which is 7 p.m.

to 7 a.m.

We're gonna focus in on whoop, I'm sorry, we're gonna focus in on residential.

Um that's the most uh important to us as you know, we have we have we have neighbors, so um we are required to uh meet the residential limits uh during the daytime and nighttime at any property that transitions to a residential use.

So we have that to the east and to the west.

Um the daytime limit according to the Naperville Noise Ordinance is 55 decibels, and the nighttime uh reduces down to 50 decibels.

Uh there's kind of a uh image on the right there that that just shows people typical things they hear throughout the day and where that falls in the decibel range.

First thing we did when we embarked on this study was to understand what it sounded like out there uh prior to us developing.

So back in March, uh specifically uh March 28th of 2025 in the morning, we set up four uh noise level meters.

So one here, right by Weatherby, one here, kind of you know, just west of the existing Nokia building, one at a very southwest corner adjacent to some residential, and then one kind of south-southwest.

Um, and we left those sound meters out to take continuous sound uh readings uh from Friday morning, 7 a.m.

March 28th of 2025 until the following Tuesday, April 1st of 2025.

And we chose those that date range for a couple reasons.

We wanted to get plenty of days and nights, so if there was any anomalies with existing noise, we could throw that out, and we certainly did find some of that, and that's that's uh indicated in the report.

Um and we also wanted to catch date uh weekday and weekend.

So we've got three weekdays uh and obviously uh Saturday and Sunday.

So uh we get we get a great kind of picture of what it sounds like they're out today without without a building on this subject property.

Here is a uh sample from our report of one of the graphs that shows the existing uh sound.

Uh it's at location N3.

So the orange kind of uh so uh on the x-axis, the you know, on the bottom of the page here, that's the the date and time uh access, the the y-axis, this vertical vertical axis of this uh graph is the decibel level.

So what you have in the orange is the Naperville code limits.

So daytime where we started out, it's at 55, then night time as the time uh proceeds goes down to 50, then up back up to 55, down to 50, so on and so forth.

The blue is our continuous readings throughout the days and nights while the meters were out there.

As you could see for the majority of time that the meters were out there, the existing noise levels were above Naperville uh noise limits.

Uh Sunday evening into Monday, it dipped below uh and kind of stayed below for a while, and back into Monday, Tuesday it shot back up.

Um so I think it's it's interesting to know, and and we do this to really understand existing you know uh sound levels at the site at any site, but it really speaks to the context of the site.

Um Michael with Chloa talked about traffic and the amount of traffic that's on Warrenville Road, Naperville Road.

Uh the existing Nokia building has HVAC systems that are running 24-7.

Uh I-88 is in close proximity to the site.

So it's not surprising that these noise levels uh throughout uh the the five days and and nights that we were out there were were elevated.

Our next step in the in the noise uh uh impact assessment process is to is to kind of uh insert our project in there uh and and model to predict what our project will uh emit from a sound standpoint.

So there's standards to do that.

We follow the ISO standard uh 9613-2 2020 2024.

Uh and we have a uh a program that we use called Sound Plan version 9.1, and it allows us to take what we call our primary noise sources and project them through our project and onto neighboring uh uh uh properties.

Uh and we we are we are able to then within that model use sound attenuation methods that we're gonna design into the building and into the HVAC system and the uh generators, also factor in trees, the berm, all those things which which attenuate the sound.

So our primary noise sources include the rooftop HVAC system, the backup diesel generators, and then certainly traffic from the facility.

So before we even did the uh the sound study, you know, we we we uh knowing sound is a sensitive issue, we we started looking at ways to mitigate sound from the facility.

Uh and that went into the design process throughout and continues today.

Uh traffic generation, so traffic is a primary source of noise.

Um, you know, we we we've spoken uh past speakers have talked about the minimal traffic that the site will generate that really works in our favor from a noise standpoint.

We just don't have a lot of traffic.

We have very, very little truck traffic.

Uh truck traffic tends to be tends to be loud.

Rooftop HVAC units, several things we did in the design and selection of those units uh to mitigate sound is the selection of the units themselves.

Um some are louder than others.

Um the system design, how many units, where they're placed on the building, things of that nature.

We uh worked with the mechanical engineer uh to design the HVAC system to be as quiet as it possibly can be.

Uh and then also working with the architect, the pair pit that that guy explained that that is on all four sides of the roof, will uh help to attenuate sound from the eight uh the rooftop HVAC units.

Backup generators, uh those are shielded uh on basically the south and east sides of both buildings by the building itself.

Um and then on the remaining sides of the generator yard, we have the 22 foot high screen wall, which does provide some attenuation.

Um it's very important to note that the individual generators that we selected have that they're encased in their own sound attenuation uh encasement.

So basically, you know, view it as kind of a sound wall built in around each of the individual units.

Uh the testing schedule, we obviously uh we'll only test the generators during the day.

Um, you know, when when guys uh as you mentioned earlier, they do need to be exercised on a monthly uh standpoint to make sure they're working and maintained.

Uh so that will be done only during the day, uh, and we will only test two generators at a time just to keep noise levels at a minimum.

Um and due to the the uh results of our sound study, we did select to uh put uh uh reinforced acoustical wall on building two.

It's about 150 feet long at the very northwest corner of building two.

It's closest to the neighbors on Weatherby.

So that corner of the of the screen wall will be a reinforced uh a sound wall, acoustic wall with acoustic panels.

It'll look very similar to the rest of the wall, but it will provide additional additional sound attenuation.

All right, so we ran two situations in our modeling.

We ran daytime, nighttime, uh with averages during that time, right?

And so the daytime, the average is a little skewed because we did throw in the testing of the generators, and I'll talk about that in situation two.

Night time, it's an average, but it's everything's constant on our site.

There's very, very little traffic at night.

Generators are not running at night, and uh HVAC is running at night, but it's a constant, it's a constant emission.

So, what this shows from the uh four locations we picked to kind of measure what it will sound like after both buildings are built and and the the our campus is fully built out uh is presented here.

So the white rows are uh daytime time slice, the blue are nighttime.

Uh and we looked at all adjacent residential uses because that's the most sensitive.

Um so this column here is background decibel level.

So these were taken from the sound level meters that we talked about earlier, and we put out uh out at the site for five uh five days, those are average.

Our modeled emissions uh is in this column here.

As you can see, every daytime model emission from our fully developed site is below 55, which is the neighbor bill limit, and every nighttime uh modeled emission is below 50, which is the nighttime limit for the city of Naperville.

Uh we summed them up here, um, and it's not a one plus one equals two.

There's an equation, it's not a linear relationship, but we basically overlap the background noise on our modeled emission to get the total uh decibel level for day and night for these four locations, and more importantly, uh the increase in decibel.

As you can see everywhere, day or night, the increase is minimal.

Um sound engineers, they you know uh an increase less than a decibel is negligible and it's it's not perceptible by most human beings.

Uh uh increase between one decibel level and two decibel levels is barely perceptible, so barely, you know, barely uh you could barely tell there's a difference uh uh in any of those locations.

Uh, and as you can see from that right-hand column, we're either you know negligible below one decibel change or uh barely above the one uh at uh the daytime reading there at 1.1.

So, situation two, what we decided to do is get rid of the averages and really focus in on worst case scenario, right?

So, what's our loudest day and what's our loudest hour?

Uh loudest days when HVAC systems running at its max and when we're testing our generators.

So we're as stated before, we're testing two generators at a time.

Um, that's it to keep sound levels at a minimum.

Um, and that's what we modeled here in situation two.

Uh background, same as before from these four uh receptor locations, modeled emissions.

You could see date again, daytime uh limit in Naperville is 55, we're below in all cases.

Total sum is in this column, and this is the increase.

So two of the four, it's negligible below a decibel, and one of them is barely over a decibel, and the other is about four-tenths over a decibel.

So, in looking at the two different scenarios, we try to understand as well as modeling the background uh noise is really understand, you know, what what it sounds like today and what it will sound like when we're done.

Uh it's important to note that our modeled emissions are lower than the existing in all cases, uh, day or night is lower than the existing averages.

So I believe that is all the slides I have on the sound, and I'll turn it over to Aaron to talk about economic and fiscal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name's Aaron Gruen.

I'm out of Chicago.

I've been a principal of Groon Gruin Plus Associates since 1991.

Grow and Gruen Plus Associates is an urban economics, market research, and land use policy consulting firm established in 1970.

I've let her played a major role in over 725 assignments for public and private clients throughout the country.

Some of these past assignments have included the analysis of the fiscal and or economic impacts of data center, industrial, retail, office, hotel, and other commercial developments, a broad variety of housing projects, as well as airports, highway interchanges, universities, hospitals, sports facilities, and other essential infrastructure infrastructure.

Some examples of the public clients for which the firm has provided fiscal and/or economic analysis are listed on the slide.

Fiscal impacts refer to the effect of a development on the budget or treasury of a municipality or other government unit.

Economic impacts refer to the effects of a development on the economy of a geographic area, such as a county, city, or state.

These economic effects are often measured by the change in jobs and incomes of workers.

Summarized in one report we did, and then I'll present the estimated fiscal impacts summarized in a second study.

The total impact of a data center or any other development represents the sum of three different economic effects.

These include direct effects, indirect effects, and induced effects.

Direct effects are typically defined as the initial round of expenditures rate related to all operations of a facility, including payrolls, non-payroll expenditures, such as for repairs and maintenance, utilities and contracted services.

Indirect effects effects refer to the changes in economic activity that result from supply chain inputs required by the data center users.

Businesses buy products from each other, creating indirect impacts in other businesses.

Finally, induced effects refer to the economic activities that result from the spending by workers whose wages or earnings are affected by the data center operations or activities.

These may be thought of as second round of effects resulting from the first round direct and indirect effects.

So while a business at the site doesn't purchase food or gas or visit a barber or a doctor, it's direct, it's direct employees and indirectly supported workers or from suppliers do consume these goods and services.

The employment, income, and output multipliers, and I'm almost done torturing you with this technical explanation I was asked to give.

Output just a fancy way for business word for business volume are key variables in any economic impact analysis.

The magnitude of the multipliers depend upon the extent to which business businesses purchase their inputs from other businesses located in the same region or geographic area, such as a county or a city, as contrasted with the purchase of goods and services or inputs located from folks outside the region or whatever the relevant geographic area is.

Common method of estimating the economic impacts of development, such as the data center is the use of input output models.

I'm not going to tell you about them, other than to say we used something called a RIMS tube input output model that's produced by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Now, because of a quirk of data center availability, the report relies primarily on a data set issued in 2023 with an underlying benchmark data from 2012 from the nation that uses multipliers from 2021, issued in 23 using 21 multipliers.

For this presentation, we also showed the impacts using a recently issued update with multipliers from 2023 and an underlying national benchmark from 2017.

In the 2021 data set, the data center industry sector had the highest employment multiplier in DuPage County.

In other words, it rippled economic effects more than any other sector.

In the 2023 data set, of the 64 economic sectors in this model, the data center sector had the sixth highest employment multiplier in DuPage County, with only a few sectors having higher employment multipliers.

Petroleum manufacturing, utilities, and water transportation are examples.

Now it would not surprise us in the long run if the older data set, the 2021 multipliers, turn out to be more accurate than the 2023 multipliers, because the newer data set reflects remote work due to the COVID behavioral reaction, which reduces local multipliers, and there were changes in consumer shopping patterns due to the COVID-19 pandemic that are now reversing.

Also in 2022, there were economic conditions distorted by pandemic related activities.

Fiscal stimulus, emergency spending, high inflation, we all know the supply chain disruptions.

So the new data set ironically may skew economic relationships or the pictures of the relationships that may not be going forward.

But the differences in outputs, the results from the use of these two data sets are to put simply not a big deal.

For the main two measures, the job estimates are within 18% of each other.

The labor income estimates are within 12% of each other.

And the difference between the base case and higher data center operation scenario will have a much wider variation in results than which data set we used.

So based on the two, there's now we're almost to the punchline.

Based on the 2021 data set, about 50% of the permanent jobs and about 62% of the annual labor income are estimated to occur within Neighborville.

Ongoing operations of the CARES Critical Data Center Development and Build Out are estimated to support 136 to 303 permanent jobs within the Naperville economy.

The total annual labor income impact is estimated to range from 13.3 million to 29.6 million or about 98,000 per job.

Now direct on-site employment at the dentist data center is actually estimated to have a higher average income of about 136,000 per job.

Now, based on the 2023 data set, ongoing operations of the CARES Critical Data Center Development at Build Out are estimated to support 112 to 248 permanent jobs within the Naperville economy.

The total annual labor impact income impact is estimated to range from 11.6 million to 25.8 million.

So now turning to the results of the fiscal analysis.

Based on the 2024 applicable property tax rates rates, and an estimate of the total equalized assessed value upon build out of the data center development of about 21,200,000.

Upon full build out, the CARES Critical Data Center buildings are forecast to generate about 1,298,700 in annual property taxes for all taxing districts, including School District 203.

School District 203 is estimated to receive the largest share of annual property tax revenue at 998,000.

The Neighborville Park District is estimated to receive approximately 60,000 in annual property tax revenue.

The Naperville Library is estimated to receive approximately 37,000.

The college to page approximately 38,000.

The slide list of estimated property tax revenues for other taxing entities.

The estimated equalized assessed value reflects an estimate that the completed data center buildings will be valued at about 150 dollars per square foot for a total market value of 63,600,000 upon a full assessment.

Just to put this in context, this assumption is close to the valuation of NTT's global data center in Atasca, which has two completed buildings, one in 2021, another in 2024, and this developments valued at 166 per square foot of building space.

Estimates provided by CARES Critical indicate that anticipates paying an effective electric rate of 0.0876 per kilowatt hour based on an estimated load factor ranging from approximately 0.55 to 0.90.

All three phases of the development when they're fully operational are estimated to consume approximately 427 million to 698 million kilowatt hours per year.

This equates to an annual electric expenditures of approximately 37,377,000 to 61,163,000.

Now the city imposes a 5% electric tax based on the gross receipts of electric usage.

This results in an estimate of an annual tax revenue of approximately $1,869,000 to $3,058,000 for the city of Naperville upon full build out.

Electric utility tax revenue is estimated to range from $1,000,000 to $3,058,000 annually and comprises about 95% of the direct fiscal benefit to the city of Naperville.

Property taxes are forecast to generate additional $90,000 or about 5% for the city of Napraville.

And I'm sure you'll be happy when I tell you this concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

So that wraps it up for us.

I know that the goal was to get to resident input, but we'll have experts available and would be happy to answer questions if we get to that point.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

I would like to hear from any of the members, public present tonight to speak on the case.

Secretary Wright, please call the first speaker.

We have Lori Melhart followed by Bill Nestor.

Nussle, sorry.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Lori Melhart, and I live at 1342 Donata Court in the Donata Woods subdivision with a south facing back of my townhome.

I want to talk today a little bit about whether this is actually going to benefit all of us residents that live in Naperville and that live in that surrounding area.

The answer is pretty complex.

We've heard a lot of information tonight, and there's a lot of factors here to consider.

Since this is complicated, I can I created a set of criteria, including tax benefits, noise lighting, energy use, and the future that has been used in other communities with data centers to show benefits and costs.

I did use data from other states.

For example, in Virginia, a significant amount of a county's tax base there comes from its data center, which reduced homeowners' property tax rate.

While that is a pro in Virginia, this data center in Naperville is not set to reduce our property taxes.

So that is a con here in Naperville.

The noise generated based on quota decibels is also a con for residential property values.

Remember how close this data center will be to our homes.

Closer than it will be to the streets.

Sound barriers are not.

The backdrop to the data center noise is already demonstrated to be too high.

Adding more noise is detrimental to our quality of life.

The possibility of nuisance lighting at the data center trespassing into homes is also a con.

This is also due to the proximity of the data center to our homes.

Massive energy use.

This is one of the issues that I think everybody is the most concerned about.

It's got a lot of attention.

Research suggests that residents often end up subsidizing data centers, with one study indicating that 70% of a mid-Atlantic grids increased electricity cost in one year was due to data center demand.

That's a big con.

Last, approving this first building, this phase one, which is being requested today, is a slippery slope that I think we all know will lead to building more data centers here, including the teardown of existing structures on the site once their current leases expire.

Adding it all up, who wants to live that close to a data center campus?

No one, certainly no one near this proposed site, and that is the biggest con of them all for our property values.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Bill Nessel followed by Daniel Voljek.

How do we?

Do you ever hear it?

Oh, here.

Yep.

Okay.

What do we do with management?

Perfect.

I don't want to answer that.

Okay.

If you want to just use the arrows out of the keyboard, that will advance the slide.

Good enough, thank you.

Okay.

Good evening, uh, commissioners.

Um, my name is Bill Nestle.

I've been a resident of Donata Woods for about 21 years now.

And I'm also the uh president of the homeowners association.

Why the data center is the wrong fit for Naperville?

Electric capacity.

Electric capacity impact.

Naperville's 2024 peak was 347 megawatts.

This proposed phase one data center could draw 34 megawatts continuously, about 10% of our city's peak equal to the demand of 27,000 homes.

And I think that was those numbers were substantiated by the list speaker.

Meaning our grid can't support it today.

Just because phase one fits doesn't mean it's wise to give 10% of our city's electricity to one single industrial user.

Even if CARIS, I'm sorry, excuse me.

Even if CARIS pays for upgrades, uh, interconnection.

Residents remain at risk if supply is stretched.

Caris claims 2.3 million in utility tax income.

But if that same power served 27,000 homes, Naperville will get the same utility tax, 2.3 million, plus 240 million in property taxes versus the million dollars that was just presented.

Naperville, I'm sorry, in addition to the that 2.240 million in property taxes, tens of thousands, tens of millions in sales tax, and thousands of local jobs.

Also, the I wanted to note is that the land use management by the city is also advocating that this property is identified to be residential.

Conditional use requires providing a pro a project is appropriate for its location.

A hyperscale industrial facility next to homes and forest preserve is not appropriate.

Technically feasible compliance alone does not make it right.

This is the wrong use in the wrong place, carrying long-term risk for Naperville families.

Let me speak about water impact.

Staff reports say CARIS plan to use a closed looped cooling system, which uses less water than evaporating evaporative methods.

But even closed loop systems need water for heat rejection, releasing absorbed heat, and make up losses, replacing what's lost through leaks and evaporation.

That still means daily water consumption, added strain to our Naperville, Naperville's capped Lake Michigan allocation, and heavy reliance on strict enforcement.

Without binding conditions, Caris could change to a higher consumption system in the future.

There are some regional risks.

Cooling systems.

Cooling systems, a closed loop may be proposed, but not enforceable conditions guaranteed.

The city should require permanent binding conditions tied to approval.

Without them, Caris retains the option to switch to a cheaper, more resource-intense technology.

Just in closing, the project strains our grid, pressures our water supply, hides behind incomplete details, and offers little real benefit in return.

Approving it puts Naperville families, not Caris at risk.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Daniel Boljak, followed by James Butt.

Good evening.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Daniel Vojak, and I'm a resident of the city of Naperville.

I also grew up in the area having attended Nequa Valley High School.

While I'm not one of the most directly impacted residents, I am still a concerned resident and would like to make my public comment at today's hearing.

I strongly urge the commission to carefully weigh whether the long-term impacts of these data centers will have on our city's infrastructure, environment, and quality of life, whether they are worth the potential economic benefits, especially the estimated two to three million annual recurring revenue.

I also, well, I do appreciate that the developers have conducted and have provided a noise impact study, traffic impact assessment, utility impact assessment, and water usage and stormwater protection plans and mitigation measures.

Well, that is great that they have that they have undertaken those assessments and considered those impacts.

I do urge the planning and zoning commissioners to really consider what the cumulative impact of all of those combined will have on the city and its residents.

So even if one in particular one, anyone in isolation may not be overly concerning.

What is really the overall cumulative impact for the city and its residents?

And furthermore, I would simply like to ask who really benefits the most from these data centers.

Is the potential two to three million annual recurring revenue for the city?

Does that justify the potential impacts and the risk that the city will be taking on by potentially giving the conditional use for these data centers?

Particularly, I'd be curious to know of the total percentage of the revenue that these data centers are projected to produce, essentially.

Uh, how much of that is represent or as a percentage, what is this two to three million annual recurring revenue compared to how much the actual developers of the project are making in total?

Is that a fair percentage?

Is the city and its residents receiving fair compensation for the risk we're taking on?

Um, those are my main concerns this evening.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

James, followed by Ken Schmidt.

I'm James Butt.

I live at 25W 130 Fairmeadow Lane in Naperville.

I live approximately 1,300 feet north of the proposed data center property.

Um, in my day job, I'm the VP of technology at a technology company.

For the last 30 years, I built, operated, and currently lease data center space in multiple data centers throughout the US.

I have seen the monumental scale changes that transform these facilities from things that fit in commercial buildings to large scale multi-building industrial facilities like what is being proposed.

I cannot find a single modern data center in Chicago that's been built in the last 10 years that is not zoned in an industrial area versus the light industry uh zoning that is in this case.

Um I've been outside many of these facilities and I'm very skeptical of the uh uh the presented noise impact.

I urge the board to review issues with local municipalities that have had uh issues in Prince William County, Virginia.

Um you imagine being in the townhouses on weather bee on a hot summer night, the power's out.

They fire up 48 locomotive sized, no kidding, that's how many horsepower they are.

They're they're equal the size of locomotives.

Um 250 feet from your bed, you can't open your windows because the generator noise and the exhaust from the generator, the screening walls that they're talking about, they're gonna help a little, but it's not gonna entirely make that go away, right?

Um I read the staff report and concerned that there's no mention about fuel storage.

Tier three gener or tier three data centers will have a minimum of 12 to 24 hours of diesel fuel on site.

They listed 24 three megawatt generators per building in the noise impact assessment.

These generators will each consume 125 to 200 gallons of diesel fuel per hour each.

3,000 to 5,000 gallons per hour per building, depending on load.

They would need a minimum of 36,000 to 115,000 gallons of diesel stored per building.

That is significantly more than the 12,000 gallon limit a gas station is allowed to have in Illinois.

When power goes out, a continuous stream of refueling trucks will start to come to replenish the fuel tanks at 4,000 gallons at a time.

That's how large the fuel fuel trucks are.

If this were not a data center, with this volume of fuel stored on site and the fuel transferring that happens, the fuel polishing that they need to do to keep the diesel uh fuel uh viable, I'm pretty sure this would be considered a petroleum products processing and storage facility that Naperville has as an industrial zoning use only.

Our neighborhood is 700 feet away, and every resident has its own well.

We are reliant on clean clean groundwater.

Storage and transfer of large amounts of fuel feet from people's homes has elevated risk from fire and to the environment.

It is unclear what type of battery, in addition, it's unclear what type of batteries they'll be using for their uninterrupted power supplies.

Um most modern data centers have started to use lithium ion batteries as one of the types of batteries in these data centers.

They're known for thermal runaway conditions and are hard to put out once they're on fire.

Fire departments struggle to put out these types of fires even when it's a single electric vehicle, and this facility will have many, many more times batteries.

In addition, the developer and their attorneys keep calling this a boutique data center, which is misleading and manipulating.

Seven years ago, this data center would have been one of, if not the largest in the area.

Today, this is not one of the largest data centers being proposed or built in the area, but it would still be in the top 20% by square footage and power usage.

This proposed facility is industrial and does not belong to close proximity to homes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Ken Smith, followed by Joseph Lambert.

Good evening.

My wife and I have lived in uh unincorporated Fair Meadow neighborhood.

Uh just uh south of the DuPage County Forest Preserve.

Uh thank you for listening.

I worked at an ATT Bell Labs.

Uh you're familiar with the situation.

Uh, worked there for 18 years.

Uh I was mostly in telecom.

I uh I know about the always on concept.

Uh when you're dealing with a telephone company, the call will always go through.

If not, you have backup uh and backup uh in less than a second is going to put that call through.

No one ever complained to ATT about noise or diesel fumes.

I assume that Nokia has uh data centers as well.

Uh and uh we haven't heard any noise from Nokia with about data centers.

It would be silly for someone to say Nokia has data centers.

You should allow us to put in a data center.

These huge industrial strength data centers are within the four neighborhoods that have been there since uh since I was here in uh 40 years ago.

Those neighborhoods are still here.

We want to keep them.

We know the overwhelming dish issues of Opus One right down the road in Aurora.

Opus one has had pay pay their uh people in Aurora for uh hotels because the noise is just so ungodly loud.

Keep it in mind.

They said that we had uh they were going to have about 62 point some number of employees when they started.

There's no research organization in the world that's going to do anything in with 62 people.

This is not research.

This is not development.

This is industrial.

That's the only thing they're having here.

This is an industrial operation.

There's going to be an endless line of tanker trucks with diesel fumes entering and exiting the these facilities.

Uh, that's going to continue forever.

The noise from these uh generators will continue.

We don't want this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And please, no clapping, comments during public forum.

Thank you.

Joseph Lambert, followed by Claire Lambert.

Good evening.

My name is Joseph Lambert.

I'm a resident of the Donata Woods uh development.

I am currently a telecommunications engineer in design.

I'm also a former firefighter with Grand Travers County, Michigan.

Um, a few concerns about this uh data center development on the property formerly occupied by Bell Labs, Alcatel, Lucent, Nokia, etc.

Since my neighbor Mr.

Butt already spoke to a couple of things, I would like to uh reinforce them with some quotes, starting with uh a quote from Dr.

Steve Pluckhart from January 21st, 2025.

Says research has shown that large-scale data centers have the potential to cause long-term soil and watershed contamination when fuel storage or runoff is not adequately managed.

In fact, environmental experts warned that contaminants can leach into surrounding neighborhoods and forest preserves, creating risk not only for wildlife, but also for families on private wells.

That was uh Dr.

Steve Pluckhart via LinkedIn.

Uh so the question would be is there some kind of spill mitigation plan in place?

Should there be a spill, what kind of relief can our neighbors expect?

Um I also take an issue with from my firefighting history.

The buildings are being termed as two stories.

I'll agree.

They have two floors, a main floor and a second floor.

According to the architectural design, which was pretty thoroughly explained, it's 56 feet eight inches tall, advertised as two stories.

My experience in the fire service, we are trained a commercial building floor or story is 12 feet.

56 foot eight inches is over four and two-thirds story.

So the good faith design is already questionable in my mind to this facility.

Um Mr.

Budd also touched on battery systems.

Uh quote from Data Center Dynamics 2023.

Industry experts also emphasize that lithium-ion battery systems, now widely used in data centers, carry significant fire risks.

These fires are difficult to extinguish, produce toxic gases, and can spread rapidly.

As one industry analyst put it, ignore lithium ion at your peril.

Lastly, for me, regarding the power usage.

Now, I've spent uh over 20 years in telecommunications.

I'm familiar with uh franchise agreements, etc., but the current plans attend to use Naperville's system to power the proposed campus.

Understood.

Um my experience is facilities of this type prefer to have a redundant power access.

Um commercial power redundant inputs maintain this 24-7365.

We gotta have it.

Uh uptime.

Now it's known that east of Naperville Road is part of Lyle.

That is serviced by Commonwealth Edison.

What is to prevent the operators of this proposed campus from contracting an alternate feed direct from ComEd, then using this for the full-time load, which I can foresee using the explanation, well, Naperville can't provide us what we need.

We need to go elsewhere to continue our operations.

This building is based on facility energy usage, so then that not insignificant number of the energy taxes would then not be brought in to Naperville.

Just a couple of points that I wanted this board to consider.

I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Clara Lambert, followed by Walter Rain.

Good evening.

Thank you for my name is Claire Lambert.

I live in Donata Woods.

Um, my home and most of the homes in my neighborhood are less than a thousand feet from the proposed site.

And I'm here tonight on behalf of my family and my neighbors to urge you to deny this conditional use permit.

It's not just my voice.

Um, the neighbors of Donata Woods, Fair Meadow, Naperville Commons, and others have united to end together.

We've submitted a petition.

Um, when we submitted it on Friday, there were 1,747 signatures.

And in less than a week, when I checked it today, there were over 1900.

These signatures represent not only residents in the four surrounding neighborhoods, but also people across Naperville, nearby communities, and relatives of those who are affected directly affected.

And we're not closing this petition yet.

We're going to keep it open.

So you can see the growth in the numbers every day.

That growth is proof that opposition is strong, expanding, and will not fade.

I want to direct you to the Naperville land use master plan.

It provides clear guidance.

It calls on the city to protect and preserve the integrity of existing residential neighborhoods, encourage compatible development adjacent to existing residential neighborhoods to minimize negative impacts, support development patterns that protect public health, safety, and the overall quality of life for residents.

This petition fails each of those tests.

The developer has been assuring us that the noise will remain below background levels, that diesel generators will only run for outages or periodic testing, and that berms and landscaping will shield the neighborhoods.

Families near the Cirus 1 data center were promised the same safeguards, yet today they endure constant mechanical hum, vibrations, and health complaints.

Aurora City officials confirmed the facility was out of compliance and had to order repairs after the fact.

By then, the residents had already suffered.

Naperville has the chance to prevent those mistakes before they happen here.

And then from a public health perspective, and I do have a graduate certificate in public health.

The evidence is clear.

And the centers for disease control and prevention link chronic noise exposure to elevated blood pressure, sleep disturbances, and impaired learning in children.

These are not abstract risks, they're well documented health impacts, and they fall hardest on children, seniors, and families living less than 1,000 feet away.

Even the developers' claim of only 5,000 gallons of water per day equals nearly 2 million gallons per year.

That's the equivalent of more than 50 households.

And I'll stop talking about water because I think you've heard a lot of that.

But anyways, this is not a buyright use, it's a conditional permit, and your responsibility is to decide if this is appropriate for this location.

And I understand that's a technology corridor, but most of the technology corridor is not touching residential areas.

The Naperville Land Use Master Plan.

Keep that in mind.

Listen to the experts from the World Health Organization, EPA, CDC, and the voices of nearly 2,000 and more residents, all point to the same conclusion.

This massive industrial data center is incompatible with residential neighborhoods.

On behalf of my neighbors and the thousands of petition signers whose numbers continue to grow, I respect respectfully urge you to deny this permit and we'll keep adding signatures because this community will not stop speaking up for its health in its future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Please, no clamping.

We have a long night.

I'd like to hear everybody.

Thank you.

Walter Rain, followed by Charles Desman.

Good evening.

My name is Walter Ryan.

I'm a resident of Donata Woods.

You know, Keras claims in their petition that the data center project supports public health, safety, property values, development, city land use, master plan.

However, I think the evidence suggests otherwise.

First, the data center threatens public health and safety.

Data centers, as you've heard earlier tonight, are massive polluters.

Their cooling systems and diesel backup generators produce noise and emissions, which are linked to respiratory issues and chronic health risks.

They create electrical and chemical hazards and put a huge strain on our electric grid.

In fact, since only one of the proposed centers could be built currently, that should suggest loudly that there's going to be a strain on the system.

So unless something changes, phase two is not going to be built.

Now they do point out that they're going to generate 61 million in construction spending and hundreds of jobs, assuming the entire project is completed.

However, they're only asking for 120 parking spots.

So somehow the math doesn't add up to me.

And in fact, I believe most of those construction dollars, and including that which the jobs, permanent jobs generate, probably will not remain in the city of Naperville.

Second, cars fails to address the harm to nearby properties.

They really avoided this issue.

The homeowners will incur loss of value.

Studies showed properties next to industrial uses can see a meaningful drop in property values.

And in fact, large data centers are increasingly considered a type of heavy industrial facility due to their massive scale, significant energy consumption, extensive power and cooling infrastructure, and substantial environmental impact.

Families in the Donada Woods, Neighbor Commons, and the new Northwoods subdivision will live with constant noise and the resulting depressed property values.

Third, Caras claims the site's isolation ensures it won't impede development.

That ignores reality.

The city has already approved Napor Commons in 2020 and Northwoods of Naperville in 2025, both residential developments next to this site.

And the 2022 land use master plan clearly calls out for this district to transition to medium density residential, not industrial.

Finally, the data center does not align with the city's uh land use master plan.

Relying on old ORI zoning ignores what has been evolving over the last 60 years.

I would say, you know, if we could fast forward 60 years from now and be sitting here and thinking about what we decide today, how would it fit with what people before us decided and what we're now experiencing dealing with these massive areas that are now being redeveloped because those sites did not pan out.

Naperville has already moved away from large corporate campuses.

The large-scale data center campus directly conflicts with your own plan.

And in conclusion, this project brings pollution, noise, health risks, it lowers property values, it strains our coal-based energy supply, and it contradicts Naperville's land use master plan.

The supposed benefits, temporary conjugate construction jobs, and limited tax revenue do not outweigh the long-term costs.

This is not a clean modern investment.

In fact, as I understand it, over 80% of our electricity comes from coal-fired plants, which is a different issue to deal with, but one that I think is relevant to the discussion today.

It is an industrial burden.

I urge you to reject this proposal, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Charles Desmond, followed by Cameron Sweeney.

My name is Charles Desman, and I live in Naper Commons.

Thank you for the time tonight to speak about this very concerning issue.

We understand data centers are essential hubs of the digital world.

However, their operation often comes with a number of costs.

The one I will be briefly addressing tonight is noise pollution.

As a need for these facilities expand, the sounds generated by their equipment and cooling systems increasingly disrupt the surrounding communities.

From the use of multiple diesel generators to the constant hum of cooling systems, the noise of a data center can reach alarming decibel levels, raising concerns about the surrounding communities' health.

Generators, cooling systems, and energy drawn from the power grid produce data center noise pollution.

Data center construction also contributes to the noise pollution as it can take years to build due to the size of the facility and its specific design.

To put noise levels into perspective, safe sound levels are 70 decibels or lower, according to the American Speech Language Hearing Association.

Exposure to sound 85 decibels and above is harmful to hearing.

Diesel generators are the most common backup power option for data centers.

Small data centers under 5,000 square feet typically use two to five generators, while hyperscale data centers can need dozens.

The two proposed damage set data centers we are discussing are over 2,000 square feet.

Generators run when the data center loses power from the main energy source, which is likely the power grid, and when being tested every month every month, excuse me.

Small generators run at about 85 dB while large generators run closer to 100 dB.

While these metrics only account for one generator, data centers usually run multiple generators at a time, increasing the decibel level.

HVAC systems are necessary to control a data center's temperature, humidity, and airflow.

Most of the system is inside the facility while some HVAC fans are outside.

With the rise in AI and data storage demand, servers consume more energy by the day.

Temperatures rise quicker when servers have large workloads.

So HVAC systems continually should work at an increased rate for cooling servers in aisles.

Jerry McGovern, an expert on the impact of digital technology on the environment, and author of data centers are noisy as hell.

State of that.

This noise contributes to the loud humming and buzzing sounds that people commonly associate with data centers.

In conclusion, this isn't just about one neighborhood.

Responsible development means considering the impact on our environment, our neighborhoods, and the shared spaces that make Naperville feel like home.

Meaning that the 55 decibels going to the 62 that they had proposed would be the 50, the 62 decibels that would be their operating uh decibels, would be a doubling of the 55.

So that would be a doubling of the standard ambiotic setting.

As well, they had not discussed anything about their backup generators and the storage of their fuel.

With that, there is plenty of well water in Naperville as well.

There is two forest reserves adjacent to the properties, Herrick Lake and the Donata Farms Forest Reserve.

With that, I would like to see some sort of safeguard to make sure that there are no spills, as Naperville currently has two properties that are listed by the EPA.

And although they are not considered on the national priorities list, they are still chemical hazards.

And I wish not to see a third one be added.

As well, they had not listed any buyers yet for the property after it is completed.

I currently live by the Route 59 corridor, and I'm very aware of what it's like to live by buildings that are unoccupied.

Thankfully, now they are occupied.

However, um wave cars, they have not had any buyers.

And with the landscape of technology changing every day, we do not know when these buildings will be filled.

Thank you, that is all.

Thank you.

We'll take a five-minute break and come back to the

Let's get started.

Next speaker, please.

Victoria May, followed by Sarah Bell.

Hello, I'm Victoria May.

I've lived in Naperville my entire life.

I live closer to where Colusha is, so this is nowhere near me, but it still affects me in the long run.

I'm against the building of this data center, not only from the uh recently discussed water pollution, the uh electrical grid problems, and the noise pollution, which also for the noise pollution in uh printers row in Chicago, they were originally estimated to have roughly fifty decibels as well, but now they are operating at 70 decibels, which is way over the limit.

It's about four times the original.

Um, I'd also like to talk about the pollution of the diesel generators.

Um, they pose a lot of health risks, especially because they release uh particular matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, um, which all causes respiratory problems and other health issues.

Um, currently they don't have a buyer, which was recently discussed, and it will most likely be filled by AI since the AI bubble is growing and is about to pop.

Um, it is not a long-term solution to uh data centers because uh people are growing against AI as well as data centers worldwide.

Uh, another issue with this proposal is that it's running on older data sets.

So, for example, with the ordinance that was in two three, that was before a lot of the research was out in recent years on the environmental damage of uh data centers, as well as just frankly, this is a profit-driven uh proposal.

These companies do not have to live with the long-term consequences that we will live with.

They will just make a quick buck, sell it to the highest bidder, and then go.

Since we're at a zoning meeting, I just wanted to briefly and thank you all for all the information that you presented.

That was very interesting, and for the platform to be able to hear us community members.

Um, and I'm learning, so maybe this is not perfect.

Please correct me if it's wrong.

Um, my understanding of what the Naperville zoning code allows, if we're talking conditional use, um, is that it cannot endanger the public health, safety, or welfare, uh, that it does not harm the use or enjoyment of nearby property, that it does not impede the orderly development of adjacent land, and that it is consistent with the adopted comprehensive master plan.

That's my understanding.

So the proposed data center raises concerns on each of these standards.

First, public health safety and welfare, as many people have already stated, diesel backup generators, high energy demand, it will strain local energy and infrastructure, noise, emissions, present fire and chemical hazards.

That sounds like that would be uh against that.

So, number two, use and enjoyment of nearby property.

So, for those who do not live near the property, as many of us do, are you aware of what is very close by the property?

And maybe this is not a platform for answers.

I see, so I will go ahead and say the sites that are located nearby are a meditation center, a an inclusive sensory playground where its stated per mission is to promote a spirit of inclusion and enhance the quality of life for all people and all abilities, and the forest preserve, an equestrian center.

So, how will industrial scale noise, visual impacts, and potential environmental risks affect the neighboring structures, the meditation center, the inclusive playground next door, which serves many individuals in our community with autism and sensory processing needs.

It is irrefutable that these impacts will reduce enjoyment of the area, affect property values, and deter prospective residents.

Orderly development of adjacent land.

Number three, a large industrial footprint right next to residential and community spaces is incompatible with surrounding land uses.

It limits opportunities for future residential, commercial, or community development.

Number four, consistency with comprehensive master plan.

Naperville's master plan directs industrial uses to designated corridors, prioritizes preservation of suburban character, and emphasizes sustainable growth.

A data center does not contribute to public facilities or community programs, and it directly conflicts with the city's stated sustainability goals, including reducing emissions 50% by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.

In closing, the facility even exceeds the intent of a light industrial I1 zoning.

It's high energy use, extensive cooling infrastructure, and backup generators create impacts more typical of heavy industrial uses, making it inconsistent with the scale and character envisioned for areas near residential neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Peter Orlowitz, followed by David Bruck.

Good evening.

And then the alteration of the essential character of the neighborhood that this development would produce.

First, the 2023 ordinance that amended the zoning code expressly recognized data centers as a conditional use that quote are designed in a manner that are distinctly different from existing professional office and residential areas.

And by the text of the ordinance, the city council intended to eliminate or limit those types of uses that were outside the refined intent of the ORI zoning district.

So even though data centers are a conditional use, given the recency of this ordinance change and the clear evidence of the city council's intent, I would encourage this commission to apply a presumption that the requested variants and the requested conditional use should be denied unless there is clear evidence that the petitioner overcomes that burden, that the use is appropriate, not merely meeting minimum city standards and checking boxes, and that any substantial doubt or uncertainty as to whether that standard is met should be resolved against the petitioners.

And that brings me to my second point regarding the character of the neighborhood, and particularly the fact that this is a secure facility requiring a perimeter fence and gate guards.

Portions of the petitioners' requests acknowledge that the data centers need for a dedicated electrical substation are of a scale and operation unique to other uses in the zoning district.

Other people have covered that much more thoroughly than I could.

But more significantly, the need for an eight-foot metal picket security fence around the entire development would certainly be out of character compared to the other industrial uses in the corridor.

As residents of Naper Commons, my family and I knew we were going to be sharing our community with Nokia with these other office buildings.

David Brook, followed by Justin Bowers.

And I really want to compare like what's the tax benefit, should it be used for any other purpose besides the this uh industrial scale data center.

If it were, you know, whether it's used for the other intended purposes, office space or light industrial, or if it were rezoned for a residential like the surrounding areas going in that direction, that you would get more tax benefit from that.

But also they didn't consider with the 1.3 million what would be the cost from reduced property taxes from the decreased property values in the surrounding area.

Also, they mentioned the provision to increase the wall size for an equipment yard wall, and whether that's to help with some of the uh no noise pollution, which it wouldn't be sufficient, uh if they end up running all of the generators together.

But also uh they showed the video going through with there are mature trees that are grown in a lot of the landscaping around the location, but there are still very visible gaps.

You can see the building at uh many different angles.

And we'd be putting up a large wall that would be an eyesource, or specifically the provision to increase the wall size, I would I would deny.

Uh and then let's see.

They they mentioned that they are doing uh major work to rework the water lines for uh a sufficient capacity.

Uh they say they're only using it for fire suppression, but simply having those water lines available that while they claim that they're going to be using uh you know a closed loop, more efficient dry um evaporation cooling system.

I don't know what would be stopping any pr you know potential buyer from changing their water use and similarly if uh uh they end up exceeding any of their uh extated you know electrical maximums should that be an additional burden.

So and that also is uh as a just a resident, I I would caution anything that's going to increase my you know water bill, electric bill, etc.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Justin.

Hold on, uh excuse me.

I've asked nicely, and if you want to continue to clap, we can just keep taking five minute breaks.

We are trying to get through the public forum.

Please, thank you.

It is part of the the regulations of the phone.

We're we're gonna take a break.

Thank you.

Yeah, telling me that this was being censored.

All right.

We'll get started.

I do ask that you respect the guidelines for being in here, planning and zoning.

If we cannot respect those guidelines, I will adjourn and we can proceed October fifteenth.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Steve Jarvis, followed by Doug Renneker.

My name is Steve Jarvis.

I grew up in Naperville and a two thousand two graduate of Neighborhood Central.

Um I'm the president of the neighborhood commons HOA, and I'm here tonight not only as a representative of my community, but also as a very conservative resident who wants to protect the character and safety of our neighborhoods.

That peaceful environment is exactly what draws people to the side of the neighborhood, and exactly what this proposed data center will would destroy.

The proposed data center poses a direct threat to our community, uh, including neighboring commons, Indian Hills, and the soon to be Northwood neighborhoods are made up of families who have heavily infested into their homes with homes valued over six hundred thousand dollars.

A massive industrial industrial facility just a few hundred feet away while it road, those property values and compromise our quality of life and endanger the long-term stability of Neighborhood's west side and north side.

The project brings noise, diesel exhaust, heat, and heavy traffic into a quiet family-oriented neighborhood.

It adds safety risk for many, let me say that many young children who live in these communities and will draw significant power from the grid at a time where more residents are working from home instead of a stability, it will bring disruption to work and potentially loss of jobs.

Data centers provide very few permanent jobs, very day-to-day, you know, very little day-to-day benefit, and yet impose lasting burdens on our residents.

Neighborville has a designated industrial corridor that are far better suited for this type of project.

This location next to our homes, schools, which are the school several feet away, the forest reserve, and our park is simply the wrong place.

I urge you to put residents first and stand with us to protect our neighborhoods, our property values, and the livability of Naperville.

Thank you for your time and please consider voting against this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Doug Renneker, followed by Ariana Kaufman.

My name's Doug Renneker.

I'm a resident of Naperville since 1981.

I worked at uh Bell Labs Lucent from uh 1979 to 2001.

Have some familiarity with the property.

Um it's clear that this development is going to be limited by the amount of energy that's available that is electrical energy.

Uh increasing capacity is a cost that has to be borne by someone.

I know Naperville uh pioneered impact fees years ago when developers wanted to annex to the city.

I think uh there's gonna be continued demands on Naperville's electricity for maybe this data center, maybe charging stations, whatever.

Umbe this isn't the forum, but I think that's something that needs to be considered as uh I would like to see that the beneficiaries of the electricity pay for it.

The other thing I want to bring up is kind of the almost dead elephant nearby, the old uh Bell Labs building.

I really don't think they're gonna get back to the glory days of uh those parking lots being full of uh cars for people that are working there, but it does beg the question of what direction that's going to go and what pressures there will be in the future for the development of that property.

Will it be data center?

Will it be residential?

What will it be?

Um, you know, and then what what happens there?

And then the last point I want to make is about uh this notion of co-location.

That's kind of an interesting idea.

In telecom, it meant actually space available in a central office where outside companies could put their equipment, and that implies that they have staff to operate it and maintain it, even if it's not uh 24-7.

And I don't know what their colo model is, whether that they would are only renting compute capacity or if they're honestly renting space.

But I think maybe some clarity about that, that may have impacts on the amount of uh parking.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Ariana Kaufman, followed by Sarah Berggrade.

My name is Ari.

Um, even though I am not directly impacted by this, I don't live in the area, but I do have a family member who will be directly impacted by this data center.

So I am there, I'm here on their behalf.

Um, also as somebody who recognizes the impact that data centers have, I also feel compelled to uh speak out against this proposal.

Um studies across the board show that data centers negatively impact the environment and community health.

Um, as I know that others have spoken about that today.

Um, data centers often pull enormous amounts of water usage, increase energy demands, and degrade the surrounding environment.

In a time where we should be taking steps towards sustainability, adding data centers to any community is taking three steps backwards without sustainable solutions.

Being next to a forest preserved, I am also concerned that this proposed data center has not completed an environmental impact study.

Additionally, the health of the community comes into question given the diesel generators, even if they are for backup purposes, diesel particulates have been linked to respiratory issues and cancer.

A research paper from the University of California, Riverside, and Caltech found that data centers could contribute 600,000 asthma related symptom cases by 2030, with overall public health costs exceeding 20 billion dollars.

The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure poses a public health crisis in communities where data centers are located.

A health risk assessment should also be demanded from this proposal.

The lack of transparency on how this affects the health of the community and the environment should ring several alarm bells.

It's clear within the public comments that the people here overwhelmingly oppose adding a data center to this location, citing environmental, health, noise, energy, and water usage concerns.

It is my hope that this commission will side with the will of the people and denied this permit of the status center.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I'm sorry, sir.

I asked prior, and I asked you to not interrupt the meeting, and I said that I would continue the meeting for October 15th.

This has been multiple.

Sir.

Can he be removed?

Bye-bye.

All right.

I apologize for that.

Next speaker.

Sarah Bergrood, followed by Kylie McBeth.

Hello, my name is Sarah.

I am a teacher in Aurora.

I feel like many of us would have an issue with this project for many reasons.

So let me touch on a few that are personal to each and every one of us.

We only get one Earth, and it's really important that we protect it.

And no matter how small these steps backwards are, if we as a community take enough of them, we're gonna have nothing left to protect.

Building and sustaining something this large will create issues such as large amounts of e-waste, soil pollution during construction, air pollution, potential electricity shortage for the surrounding area, and local job displacement.

The jobs that this creates would mainly be specialty jobs in which outside help would be required, thus lacking the job availability for the local community.

The noise that this will produce, both from construction and from the facility itself, will disrupt local wildlife who reside in the nearby forest preserves, which lie only two to five miles away from the building site, as well as residents in the local area who live less than a mile from the site.

Some important questions to consider here.

As my friend has said, there is no environmental impact study, which is important for any building location, and there's no health assessment that has been completed on this project.

Everything except these two crucial pieces have been touched upon.

We have even talked about traffic and parking lot fixtures, but not health and environment.

The next question is how will you safely dispose of this e-waste without impacting the environment around it?

The profuse amount of public comment that's against this facility is too much to be ignored.

We hope that you will take the citizen input into serious consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Callie McBeth, followed by Jan Banowitz.

Callie McBeth.

Jen or excuse me, Jen Banowitz.

Follow Bob Barbara Benson.

Hi, I'm Jen Banowitz.

I have lived in Fair Meadow neighborhood, which is adjacent to this property for 24 years.

I wanted to thank you for this forum and also thank the petitioner for the information.

There was a lot of details, uh, again, down to the last parking fixture, but there was no details on how many backup generators you were talking about or how much power.

And that's really to me with the importance of the impact here.

You're leaving us to guess based on other facilities.

But I want to really congratulate all the speakers tonight.

I think you all brought up amazing points, and I could jump on every one of them, but I want to talk really briefly about context, especially since this uh planning and zoning commission is about context.

It's true that this property was an original uh Bell Labs, part of the corridor that we've been talking about.

But I want everyone to, when you get a chance, pull up Google Maps and really really look at this parcel and go bigger because everything the petitioner showed was a very, very cropped photo, and it just showed a tiny industrial complex.

But if you look at this surrounding area, it's all green, and it's evolved so much over the years.

And a lot of that is with your guidance.

My neighborhood has been there 50 years, but since I've lived there 24 years, there are now three, four, five new neighborhoods that has been approved by the city of Naperville and its neighbors.

There's a sensory playground, things like that.

This area has evolved to be an oasis, and it's a mix of residential and recreation spaces, and it's coexisted nicely with business.

And everything I've heard about the data center, um, considering that the rest of Chicago considers it industrial, does not fit into this light industrial classification of this area.

And I think we've really struck a beautiful balance in this kind of uh area.

Again, look at Google Maps.

You'll see all the greenery, you'll see all the neighborhoods, you'll see all the businesses, and a data center is the odd thing out.

So uh please consider that.

And I would hope that if you are thinking about your own neighborhoods, would you want a data center built next to your neighborhood?

So when you're making that decision, you know, it's it's really something you need to take to heart because we're neighbors.

And whether you live in this part of Naperville or my part of Naperville, uh, it's a slippery slope.

And once a data center is approved one place, it might suddenly be approved many other places too.

So we're we are very careful to be setting a precedent here.

Uh, thanks for your time, and I appreciate the forum this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Barbara Benson, followed by Charles Byers.

Byers, good evening.

I'm Barbara Benson, Chair of the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force Building and Development Committee.

I'm here to express our concern regarding the proposed CARES Critical Data Center.

Um, despite being zoned ORI and the amended ordinance allowing a data center as a conditional use, um, we see this project's location as inconsistent with the city's long-term vision as outlined in the 2022 Naperville Land Use Master Plan and poses significant impacts on the nearby residential area.

The land use master plan designates this area as a regional center intended for multi-purpose development that attracts visitors and customers from the surrounding region.

Data centers are industrial facilities with low employment density and minimal community interaction, making them incompatible with this vision.

Approving a data center would also undermine the city the city's strategic plan for the I-88 corridor.

The city identified this area as a major redevelopment opportunity, seeking to attract businesses that create high-paying jobs and contribute to a vibrant economy.

The data center would generate few jobs and no public use.

It runs counter to this goal.

It also clashes with the guiding principle number three of the land use master plan, which emphasizes a diverse mix of business and employers that foster economic growth.

In addition, data centers place a substantial strain on local utilities.

The proposed facility would require a significant increase in electricity and water use, potentially necessitating expensive upgrades and raising costs for residents.

Furthermore, a data center provides minimal economic benefit to the community while it generates very few jobs, negligible sales tax revenue, especially when compared with mixed-use developments, retail, housing.

The project's location near the residential areas is also a concern.

The data center's diesel generators will cause, as other people have indicated, both air and noise pollution directly affecting the health and quality of life for residents.

Additionally, the facility's extensive lighting could contribute to light pollution.

In conclusion, approving this data center would mean losing an opportunity to develop mixed-use housing and other development activity that the city has sought in this area.

We urge you to consider these significant drawbacks and reject this proposal in favor of a project that would better align with the long-term economic, social, and environmental goals of our community.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Charles Byer, followed by Maureen Stillman.

Hello, folks.

My name is Charles Byers.

I live at 2 South 710 Wendelin Court in Wheaton, which is unincorporated DuPage County, about 8,000 feet from the proposed data center.

I know I'm not a Naperville resident, but I have a few things to say nonetheless.

I'm probably the only person here that is reservedly in favor of this data center, and let me tell you why.

First of all, the sorts of work that gets done in these data centers is essential to our modern society.

And I believe the type of data center that those folks are proposing represents a very reasonable use of best practices in the construction of such a facility.

Second, the sorts of things that modern data centers do, especially artificial intelligence, digital twins, simulation of things like climate models and health can actually go to improving some of the health, well-being, and energy concerns associated with what we've been hearing for the last hour and a half.

So it's not all bad.

That's my first point.

But I said I had some concerns and reservations.

And let me just tell you some of the things that I think the council might want to ask these folks about and make sure that you're being told the right answers and that they are giving you assurances that those answers are not going to change in the future.

And I'll just go through a quick list and I'll be done.

First of all, they claim they're not using water.

I believe it.

The dry cooling technologies that they're using doesn't use water, but they have to maintain those dry cooling technologies across all phases.

And there should be some kind of contract that says, you know, we expect a certain amount of water to come into this facility.

If it gets exceeded, then you might want to go into an investigation about whether they're actually doing some uh cheating with slightly evaporative cooling, which is possible and often done.

Uh second, we want to ask whether they're doing a technology called demand response, which means that if Naperville finds themselves sweating on an August afternoon, not enough electricity in the grid, they can call the data center and say, excuse me, could you start those generators and run them from like 10 in the morning until seven at night tonight?

All right.

That's not a two-hour test.

That is an afternoon.

So we have to have assurances if indeed the public doesn't want those generators running extended times that demand response is not going to be an important part of this from either the data center's perspective or the city of Naperville's power grid perspective.

Okay.

That is especially important as we start to get into the second phase where they're obviously overloading the first and only substation on the facility.

There's also a technology called behind the meter generation, where they say we're going to cut off the grid and we're going to put a combined cycle gas turbine here instead.

You might want to prohibit that unless you want to plumb in a bunch of natural gas instead of a bunch of electricity.

That's exactly what the combined cycle gas turbines would do.

Choose whether you want to do that or not.

But I suspect these people will have very much concerns about the emissions of combined cycle gas turbines and their noise footprint.

So don't power phase two with a gas turbine.

Okay.

A couple of other things correctly concerns about fuel limits, uh, total storage on site, and the alarming and sequestration and confinement of any leaks from those fuel tanks.

So have your city inspectors very carefully look at the mechanisms to report leakages, the way that those leaks are isolated from the groundwater, because that will be a difficult to recover from mistake if those tanks leak from the bottom and that hits the aquifer.

I would suggest that you take a look at the possibility of bypassing the grid in Naperville to go to Commonwealth Edison.

That is a significant problem for you if you're expecting $3 million of tax revenue from the uh the taxes on those electrical things.

Uh finally, I think it might be reasonable to take an environmental impact statement, especially the carbon footprint, especially the carbon footprint due to Napraville's very unfortunate decision to use coal-fired power plants to generate their electricity.

So I would suggest that uh, you know, we're talking about the environmental impact of running uh a few diesel generators for an hour or two a month.

The real environmental impact is what's blowing out of the stacks down south where your electricity is generated.

And that's a thing that I suspect hasn't been talked about, should be talked about, and should be an important part of Naperville's future to fix that ongoing problem.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Maureen Stillman, followed by As Driegan.

Good evening.

I'm Maureen Stillman.

I'm reading this statement on behalf of Kathy Carkin, who has a sick child at home.

We're both Naperville residents.

My name is Kathy Carkin.

I'm a resident of Naperville and an environmental chemist.

I have worked as a contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency on the Superfund technical assessment and response team.

I have analyzed large data sets of soil, air, and water pollutants to assess the human health risks.

My focus is on mitigating the impacts of pollution on health and climate change.

Viewed through the lenses of public health and climate change, it is clear that the proposed data center is a bad deal for Naperville.

Locally, the air quality will decrease.

The proposed data center includes 48 backup diesel generators, each rated at three megawatts.

To put this in perspective, one of these generators pollutes as much as 2,000 idling diesel trucks.

Multiply that by 48, and you begin to see the potential for spikes in local air pollution.

Diesel fumes cause both acute and chronic respiratory and cardiovascular illness and disease.

High exposure to diesel exhaust has been linked to lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

Diesel is also very noisy, and the generators will be much louder than trucks.

Residents living in the vicinity of the proposed area data center are already burdened with higher exposure to air pollution and noise due to the proximity to busy roads and I-88.

In addition to the local air pollution, regional air pollution will increase because of the significant increase of electricity demand, a 44% increase in Naperville's overall electricity usage.

Naperville's current electricity mix is approximately 80% coal, as the prior speaker mentioned.

So this increase in demand will result in an increase of the amount of coal that we burn.

Burning coal releases air pollutants such as nitrous oxides, sulfur oxates, and particulate matter into the air, which increases the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

Air pollution modeling shows that this pollution travels throughout the region, impacting not just the downstate residents.

So Prairie State is in downstate Illinois, but also residents of DuPage and Cook Counties.

Burning more coal to power a data center also increases the amount of carbon pollution into the atmosphere when rapid decarbonization is actually what is needed.

Naperville, a community with some of the dirtiest electricity grid in Illinois, has no business considering a data center if we intend to reduce our carbon emissions.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

As Dregan.

Followed by Arlene Greenberg.

Hi, I'm Ash Drain.

I live in Aurora.

I I have two quick statements that haven't already been covered multiple times.

One is uh that uh the the one of the important things about uh data centers is the the sound is so invasive, not because necessarily the decibel level is higher than what is considered damaging, but because of the frequency is very similar to the frequencies that we use to talk to each other.

So it is almost impossible for a person to tune it out.

So it is uh disproportionately harmful.

Um that's that's the first thing.

And then the second thing is um when uh when a um developer comes in and says estimated or uh something like that, that's usually the minimum that they can get away with um without being called a liar.

Um so I don't think that I would um believe their estimates without more concrete data.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Arlene Greenberg.

And Mr.

Greenberg, did you want to speak as well?

Okay, I'll let you speak after her.

You'll be the final speaker.

Thank you.

I need my muscle.

Hi, my name is Arlene, and I've been DuPage County resident for I'm just gonna say over 60 years.

That's good enough.

And my husband here, who's with me, is the same, and in fact, he's the one of the last grandsons of the um last black smoke in Naperville, just to kind of put things in perspective a little bit.

Um I excuse me.

I don't think any of us want to take our kids, our grandkids to St.

Jude's or Ronald McDonald House, or your parents, or anybody else to the hospital because they had a heart attack or lung cancer, and there's so much money and so much pressure involved in this situation.

I mean, just for the beautiful architectural thing we we saw up on the screen, that had to be two million dollars just to do that little thing.

So I'm really concerned just how much pressure there is on everybody on the board to make sure that this goes through.

I've I've talked to people from the forest preserve, I've talked to people in a number of departments, and everybody's kind of quiet.

You can get a little bit out of them, but for the most part, from what I understand, one department doesn't want to kind of rustle someone else, and there's all these little deals that everybody has to make because this is such an important project financially, but what I really want to talk to you about is what is the real cost to the people now Naperville right now, you haven't made the top 10, but you've made number 13.

Number 13 in particulate pollution, and that's a bad place to be.

That's a bad place to start, and this is from the American Lung Association.

So, what is particulate pollution?

What makes it so insidious?

When you you can inhale it in, but you can't exhale it.

So it also passes the blood the blood cell barrier, which means it can go to the heart, it can go to the brain.

So give me a minute, I gotta search through my notes a little bit here.

Uh Naperville's number 15 in ozone.

And number 53 for the worst, and this is out of 250, I don't think I said out of 258 metropolitan communities that they studied in the US.

Um, and it's about to get worse because you're considering a data center, and we know that data centers cause pollution.

So how do we know?

Well, an order signed by Joe Biden before he left office, Order 14141, titled Advancing U.S.

Leadership in AI infrastructure, acknowledged that data centers are harmful to health.

It recognized the declining air quality and rising cancer rates around data centers.

He tried to implement safeguards, but they were revoked by President Trump.

So we know data centers pollute with backup generators, and um the particulate matter they put in the air, overheated servers, introduce we we've already talked about carbon monoxide, nitrogen, sulfur dioxide.

I I think another person has spoke to that.

They have uninterrupted power, which means they're running 24 hours seven days a week, they emit a constant noise.

They emit a constant noise.

Now, where you're putting this is in this really beautiful environmental area that that has really drawn people to Naperville and Wheaton, where I live.

So how does it affect animals?

How does it affect the horses?

Now I called Donata.

I said, did you I called the equestrian center?

I said, have you spoken to anybody about the effects this is gonna have on the horses?

And the reason I'm talking about animals is their hearing is so much better than yours and mine, and they're exposed to that.

They're gonna be they're less than a mile away.

So we have information on what happens to to horse farms that are near these data centers, and if you do anything, please move those horses.

When I talked to the forest preserve about these horses, which I think they're precious, their response to me was don't talk about the animals.

People are gonna shut you off if you talk about the animals, but we we're talking about a very sensitive environmental area that even you know fox uh I fox, bats.

Uh you can go through the whole list of how sensitive their hearing is, how much more sensitive they are to all the sound, and they won't be able to get any relief from it.

And when they can't get relief from it, what they do is they run out into the streets, or they run into the neighborhoods, and then you're gonna get calls like, oh, you have to kill these skunks, or you have to kill these rabbits, or you have to kill these whatever because that is a part of it.

This is important to your environment.

This is what has drawn people to this area, and I think at this point, you really have to decide what kind of community you want to be.

Do you want to be a suburban community, or do you want to be in uh an arm of Chicago?

And it really comes down to something that simple.

The true cost is in the quality that you're gonna experience in life.

That's the true cost here.

The true cost is who's who here is gonna end up with a cancer or a baby born premature because of all this pollution.

Um I can go on about utility costs and all that, but I think I probably spoke long enough.

Thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Miss Greenberg, I don't think you need muscle.

Uh Mr.

Greenberg, you're the final speaker.

Hi there.

It has been already understood.

I'm Bob Greenberg.

And I live in Wheaton.

Um my family grew up here in Naperville.

Uh there's a lot of them been around since uh the 1880s.

If you see anybody who looks like me, don't call a cop, because he's probably all right.

Anyhow, one of the things that I wanted to uh address is that uh you have an aquifer here, the Muhammad aquifer.

Uh and SSL is already brought up.

You have a lot of possibilities here for that being infiltrated with uh various pollutants.

My background is in uh water and sewer.

There used to be a water and sewer superintendent in a neighboring community.

And I've seen that the aquifer just dwindled down to nothing, and the actual already there's a lot of pollutants in it, and it's getting unsafe to drink from.

So you have a lot of people in the surrounding area that have wells that aren't too far from there, and uh would take them into strong consideration.

Uh not too long ago, there was a horrible uh string of events at uh BP Amical that really never got totally figured out, but uh you probably have heard about it.

A lot of people died as a result of that were working there from from uh can't various cancers.

So these are the kind of things uh you need to think about, and I don't think I can say any better than she did.

The quality of everybody's life here is what really matters.

So thanks a lot and good luck.

Thank you.

And we're basically here because uh when we heard how close people live to this, we were concerned.

So thank you, folks.

Thank you.

Are we all right?

Uh are there any other members of the public that would like to speak that did not sign up?

All right, I will look to the commissioners.

If you have specific questions that you would like to have addressed uh at the next meeting, October 5, October 15th, now would be the time to come forward with those questions.

All right.

Um I will say I truly appreciate everybody's time.

Uh I thought the petitioner's case was phenomenal.

I thought the community was great tonight.

I appreciate everyone for hanging with us, and I apologize for all the disruptions.

Um, the one question I do have for Keris that I would like to have a better understanding is you know what is the intent?

What is your long-term commitment?

Um, when I asked that, I you know, do you plan to develop this land and sell it?

Do you plan to divide it up and long-term lease it out?

And the reason I asked that question, and I think that it's important, is as we talk about all these environmental impacts.

If we are to you know, chip away at each one of these and come to some sort of community impact agreement.

If you were to sell the land or to lease it, I would ask staff, I would want to make sure any sort of agreement on those environmental impacts would be legally enforceable to whoever owns that land.

So that's my question.

Oh, and Commissioner Wright.

Sorry, I do have one question for staff.

Is it possible to get a copy of the um the uh presentation we can certainly request that if the petitioner is willing to share it, otherwise it has been recorded as part of tonight.

Okay.

It is available on the city's website.

Oh, it is available.

Okay, great, thank you.

Great.

I would like to entertain a motion to continue DEV-0057-2025 to the October 15th, 2025 PCC meeting.

So moved.

So moved.

Second.

All right, Commissioner Wright.

I would like to I would like to make a motion to continue the public hearing for D V0057-2025 to the October 15, 2025 planning and zoning commission meeting.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right, motion carries.

Next is the approval minutes for the act August 20th, 2025 planning and zoning commission meeting.

Do we have any corrections to the minutes?

Do not.

I would like to entertain a motion to approve the meeting or the minutes for August 20th, 2025 planning and zoning commission meeting.

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right, motion carries.

There's no old, new.

I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.

I make a motion.

Second.

All right.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right, meeting adjourned.

Thank you.