Hoffman Estates ready for a ‘modern era’ with data center project at former Sears site

Hoffman Estates is ready for the former Sears headquarters to abandon its affiliation with traditional retail and welcome a technology-focused project.

The suburban village, along with ComEd and Compass Datacenters, hosted a kickoff event Thursday to celebrate the sprawling site’s transformation into a massive data center campus — a 197-acre site that would become one of the largest of its kind in Illinois and Compass’s first. data center campuses in the state.

Compass CEO Chris Crosby visited the Sears location while it was still operational. He sees the future of the site as durable as a data center and said it will be a 100-plus-year-old facility, intentionally designed to be updated over time.

“It will be a center of the economy – a different economic world, but the center of the economy for a very long time,” Crosby said.

The project will become one of the 10 largest data centers in Illinois and will represent the continued growth of the data center market. Real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield ranked Chicago No. 7 for its 2024 list of the nation’s top 10 markets for data centers. Chicago is also among the markets that added “a large amount of capacity” for data centers over the past year, according to the report.

“Everything you do touches these types of places,” Crosby said. “I think it’s hard for people to realize how much everything happens in a data center: the cloud lives somewhere, the AI ​​lives somewhere and it’s really the engine of the data economy. Today.

Dallas-based Compass purchased the site in September 2023 for $194 million. At the time, he remained discreet about its use. It has since announced plans to build five hyperscale data centers, each expected to span more than 250,000 square feet.

The development is expected to generate an estimated investment of $10 billion in the coming years, with the first data center expected to be powered by ComEd in mid-2026.

Compass also hopes to create 1,000 new jobs through construction.

Hoffman Estates Mayor William McLeod was on the village board when the former Sears, Roebuck & Co. moved into his building in 1992 from downtown Chicago.

The headquarters “transformed the west end of Hoffman Estates,” McLeod said. In addition to infrastructure improvements and new roads, the campus was “teeming with people” and was the largest employer in the village. Now, following Sears’ exit in 2021, McLeod is ready to see the site enter a new chapter.

“We are excited to welcome Compass Datacenters and see the Village of Hoffman Estates become part of the growing digital economy,” McLeod said. “Working closely with ComEd and Compass, we look forward to bringing this prime site into the modern era.” »

ComEd helped secure 15 new commercial projects in the region last year, including nine data centers.

The world is increasingly driven by data, which requires much more power than in the past, said Gil Quiniones, CEO of ComEd.

American Demolition of Carol Stream is currently completing some demolition at the site. Demolition will take about 18 months, according to Compass, before construction can begin.

Compass plans to begin construction in late 2025.

The company plans to use sustainable practices during the demolition and construction process, such as crushing and reusing concrete, stone and asphalt from Sears buildings.