US Karis Plans to Acquire 168 Acres for Data Center Campus Development

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Real estate firm Karis is eyeing a new potential data center development project outside Chicago, Illinois.

According to the Naperville Sun/Chicago Tribune, Karis Critical is considering purchasing the 168-acre INEOS property (formerly the BP campus) at 150 Warrenville Road in DuPage County to develop a data center campus. The newspaper saw a memo, and Karis confirmed to the Sun that the company introduced local officials to its plans for the site during a meeting last month and is seeking feedback.

Karis spokesperson Patrick Skarr told the Sun that the company requested the meeting but noted that discussions are still in early stages and no plans have been finalized. "We have no pending proposal for that 168-acre campus," Skarr said. "We have not made a decision to invest in that corridor... We are still not the owner of the property. We have no rights to propose anything on that property. We are just exploring."

The report indicates that Karis's plan could involve developing a 125,000-square-foot (11,613 square meters) data center, along with over 1 million square feet (92,903 square meters) of manufacturing space. Naperville, located west of Chicago, is the largest data center hub in Illinois. According to the Illinois Economic Development Corporation, the 186-acre INEOS site currently has a potential grid capacity of 27MW, expandable to over 100MW.

The Naperville research and development complex was previously operated by U.S. oil and chemical company Amoco, dating back to the 1960s/1970s, and was taken over by BP after its acquisition in 1998. BP sold its petrochemical business to Ineos in 2020 in a $5 billion deal, and the campus was part of that transaction. CBRE was commissioned in 2021 to find a buyer for the Naperville campus. JLL is currently listing the campus.

Karis previously sought to develop a data center at the former Alcatel-Lucent campus in Naperville but was rejected by local officials due to resident opposition. Karis Critical describes itself as an investor in data center land, energy, and infrastructure. The company is developing a data center in DeKalb, Illinois, and is known to be eyeing sites in Ohio. The company's website also lists potential projects in Aiken, South Carolina; New Albany, Ohio; DeKalb, Illinois; and Birmingham, Alabama.

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