White Rose Partners Project Kilo data center, South Elgin, Illinois

White Rose Partners, a Dallas developer, wanted to annex 20 acres at 33W304 Kenyon Road, at the northwest corner of Kenyon Road and Illinois Route 25, into South Elgin in Kane County, Illinois, for a data center on farmland owned by former Kane County Board member Mike Kenyon. In August 2026 the South Elgin Village Board of Trustees unanimously rejected the annexation and a special use permit for the project, which the developer called Project Kilo, and the village paused all new data center proposals.

The building would have covered 200,000 square feet, with 40 chillers on a rooftop platform and 20 emergency generators, and the developer had asked Commonwealth Edison for 48 megawatts of power, which its application said the Bartlett substation could supply. Kenyon, 81, a dairy farmer who represented the area on the county board as a Republican for 18 years, knew what was coming. "My wife is mad at me," he said. "I'm expecting people to be mad at me."

Managing partner Jeff Eigenbrood said the building would use closed loop cooling filled once with less than half an Olympic pool of water, that "ongoing operational water usage will be less than that of two single-family homes in South Elgin," and that it would pay more than $1 million a year in property taxes. The company's project website put the noise at 30 to 35 decibels at the property line, about 600 construction jobs at peak, and noted the land now pays under $8,000 a year in property tax.

Anthony Saccomanno, president of the nearby Prairie Pointe subdivision, started a petition that drew 4,800 signatures in under 48 hours. "We are sitting on a water table that is a community well, and they want to draw off of that," he said, pointing out that the village staff report put daily use at 247 to 342 gallons. The site is less than half a mile from South Elgin High School, Kenyon Woods Middle School and Clinton Elementary School, where Saccomanno has children at all three: "I'm not against data centers, and I'm not against AI, just not right next to us."

By July 28 the change.org petition had 8,347 signatures and White Rose had launched a website, with Eigenbrood saying "there has been a lot of misinformation circulating online." When the concept plan reached the village board, trustees rejected both the annexation and the special use permit. "I'm voting no almost only because of the location," said Trustee Greg Lieser. "AI is here to stay. America needs to lead the AI industry, and we need data centers to do that."

Wendy Man, a resident of 30 years, said "we should not have to choose between economic development and protecting public health." White Rose's senior development manager, Alejandro Fuentes, had said 60 percent of the site would be green space and the project would generate $7.8 million to $28 million in tax revenue for the village. Richard Williams, a Geneva attorney for the company, said it was evaluating its options, would neither confirm nor rule out suing the village, and complained the plan had not been judged on its merits.