Data Center Boom in Elk Grove Village, Illinois
Return to On-Premises Work
In the last couple of years, I have specialized in cloud-based networking with Azure, AWS, and Cloudflare. But every once in a while, I get the opportunity to return to on-premises work. Last week, I had just such an opportunity at a colocation facility that is near and dear to my heart in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. I was struck by the sheer amount of data center development in the area.
The Lunt Avenue Data Center Corridor
The photo below, facing east, shows one of the most dense and diverse data center locations on Lunt Avenue. In this photo, you can see:
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Equinix CH3: A bit of the oldest data center on the far right side
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Equinix CH5: The new data center currently under construction, located next to CH3
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EdgeConneX CHI02: A tiny glimpse of this new facility between CH5 and a nearby tree
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Stream’s Chicago I: Visible in the distance
Not visible in this photo is Stream’s Chicago II data center, which is located nearby on Busse Road, plus Stream’s three other data centers currently in development on Landmeier Road in Elk Grove Village.
Expansion Beyond Village Borders
In addition to the two new data centers on Lunt Avenue, I also spotted a gigantic data center being built for CyrusOne in neighboring Bensenville, Illinois, at the intersection of Illinois Route 83 and Bryn Mawr Avenue, as shown in the photo below.
An Unlikely Location for Digital Infrastructure
What seems particularly interesting to me is how this boom is happening in such a challenging location. If you deal with circuit lead times, there are two factors that usually mean you’ll be waiting a very long time for connectivity: nearby airports and train tracks.
Elk Grove Village’s industrial area sits just west of O’Hare Airport, and its high-density logistics, trucking, and manufacturing operations are crisscrossed with so many train tracks that you can even see locomotives branded with the village name—like the one I waited for in the photo below.
