The proposed $500 million data center that CyrusOne wants to build in southwestern Sangamon County would generate up to $6 million more each year in property taxes by the early 2030s, an official from the Dallas-based company told Illinois Times.
“It would be a real asset to the county,” Bradd Hout, location and power strategy director for CyrusOne, said in an interview before a public hearing scheduled by the Sangamon County Board for the evening of Dec. 3 at the BOS Center.
If the Republican-controlled, 29-member County Board approves a conditional permitted use in an area zoned for agriculture, the company would begin construction in 2026 on the first of six proposed 250,000-square-foot buildings and complete each one within a year to 18 months, Hout said.
“The project follows a phased approach that builds in alignment with customer needs and available grid capacity, similar to CyrusOne’s other multi-building campuses,” he said.
Hout addressed concerns from critics who have said the tax benefits could largely evaporate if CyrusOne later sought a major reduction in assessed property value. Promising property tax benefits and then seeking any substantial reduction would be “disingenuous,” “unheard of”’ in the company’s history and “not aligned with CyrusOne’s commitment to being a transparent, responsible partner in communities where we operate,” he said. “Property tax assessments will follow standard county procedures in accordance with Illinois law.”
Promising tax benefits and then backpedaling to seek any substantial reduction would be “disingenuous” by the company, “unheard of” in the company’s history and “unlikely in the near term,” Hout said. He noted that CyrusOne isn’t seeking any tax breaks as part of any economic incentive package.
The company is seeking zoning approval from the County Board to establish a 636-megawatt data center, the first in the county, on 280 acres of farm ground in Talkington Township, immediately north of Swift Current Energy’s $800 million Double Black Diamond solar farm.
Illinois Times was the first to report on plans for the data center Oct. 17. The newspaper then reported Nov. 7 that the timeline for County Board consideration had been lengthened at least a month, putting a potential vote on zoning at the County Board’s Jan. 13 meeting.
Hout said Dec. 2 that additional engineering and design work the company needs to submit to Sangamon County officials could further delay that timeline. He said the company now hopes to seek an advisory recommendation from the Sangamon County Zoning Board of Appeals and a final vote from the County Board by the end of March 2026.
Critics of the project have called for as much as a six-month delay in consideration of the project so all of the pros and cons can be studied and debated. Sangamon County government officials have created an online question-and-answer page on the project.
Critics question the touted economic benefits of the project. They also say the large electrical demands of data centers contribute to rising energy prices and rates in the Midwest and will make it harder for Illinois and the rest of the country to reduce dependence on climate change-causing fossil fuel power plants.
Water usage to cool equipment in the data center doesn’t appear to be a major concern, at least not yet, because of what CyrusOne describes as a proposed “closed-loop” cooling system that makes water use comparable to a typical office building.
The primary beneficiaries of any property tax revenue increases for the site would be the Girard-based North Mac school district. Other affected taxing bodies would include Sangamon County government, Talkington Township and the Virden Fire Protection District.
The project would create more than 500 temporary construction jobs over the multi-year construction period and more than 100 permanent full-time jobs for workers with echnical, facility management and operational roles, CyrusOne said.
“These positions draw from a broad range of experience and skill sets, some of which do not require a college degree,” Hout said.
He added, “Project labor agreements would be used to prioritize union labor and local workforce participation in the construction.”
The number of permanent jobs created wouldn’t be large, but Ryan McCrady, president and CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance, a local economic development group in favor of the project, said the property tax benefits would be “tremendous” and “transformative” for the affected entities.
McCrady estimated that farm ground designated for the project currently generates less than $20,000 a year in property taxes, compared with $6 million in the future.
For comparison, McCrady said it would take 600 new homes, each paying $10,000 a year in property taxes, to generate an amount equivalent to what the data center would pay. But he said those homes would create additional demands for school districts and other taxing bodies that the data center wouldn’t create.
CyrusOne operates more than 55 data centers worldwide. In Illinois, it operates a data center in Lombard and Aurora – both smaller than what is proposed for Sangamon County.
CyrusOne contracts with various companies for data storage and transmission, Hout said. When asked whether major AI providers such as Google, Facebook or Amazon would be customers of the Sangamon County data center, CyrusOne officials said they cannot disclose specific customer information because of confidentiality agreements.
“What I can say is that data centers power the digital infrastructure behind hospitals, banks, schools, emergency services, telehealth and everyday services like streaming and smartphones,” Hout said.
Most of the land for the proposed site, which Hout said would be purchased if zoning approval is granted, appears to be connected to ownership groups related to Dowson Farms of Divernon.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2014 that Dowson Farms paid $5.36 million to the federal government to “resolve allegations that it conspired to avoid statutory caps on federal farm subsidy payments from 2002 through 2008, under terms of an out-of-court settlement” in which the business didn’t admit liability.
The announcement said federal prosecutors had alleged that Dowson Farms’ principal owners, John J. Dowson, John C. Dowson, Darrel Thoma, Amy D. Thoma, and Melissa D. Vorreyer, “violated the False Claims Act by creating multiple entities, falsely claiming that these entities were actively engaged in farming separate and distinct from Dowson Farms. As a result, Dowson Farms’ owners allegedly received farm subsidies to which they were not entitled.”
Dowson Farms is also the landowner for the vast majority of the Double Black Diamond Solar farm, adjacent to the proposed data center site. Darrel Thoma told IT in 2022 that they had entered into a long-term lease with Swift Current Energy.