Microsoft proposes Cherry Valley data center on 300 acres

A proposed Cherry Valley Microsoft data center at U.S. Route 20 and Wheeler Road in Boone County could bring up to 300 high-tech jobs to the region by 2030.

Microsoft unveiled the proposal on 309-acres of what is now agricultural land during an open house Monday at the Tebala Event Center, 7910 Newburg Road.

The prospect of new high-paying jobs coming to the region attracted the attention of Dino Pandya, a Rockford resident who has one child who studying for a doctorate in physics at Princeton University and another who will soon graduate from Northwestern University with a master's degree in computer science.

"It’s going to be a good thing for the community," Pandya said. "I think we need something like that to bring high-quality jobs to the area, and it will inspire our next generation."

The project will be considered by the Cherry Valley Planning & Zoning Commission at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

More: Microsoft keeps expanding its Racine-area data center campus. Latest purchases total $14.6 million

Microsoft would be 'a very quiet neighbor'

A Microsoft spokeswoman in an email to the Rockford Register Star said the Cherry Valley data center is part of Microsoft’s "broader strategy to expand its datacenter infrastructure to support increasing demand for Azure cloud services."

If the project moves forward, it would begin in summer 2026 and is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs. The first data center building would be complete in summer 2028.

Additional buildings could be constructed afterward and up to six buildings would be built on the site in all. Each would house servers that help form the backbone of cloud computing services relied for shopping, banking, streaming videos, sending emails, storing files and doing anything else online.

The servers are air-cooled to minimize water use and the operation at full capacity is expected to consume about the same amount of water as 30 homes. Microsoft is promising to utilize 100% renewable energy by 2025 and plans to eliminate the use of diesel generators for backup power by 2030.

Each building utilizes about 50 employees including staff management, environment operation personnel, learning and development staffers, information technology operators, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, security guards and building maintenance workers.

Plans call for the campus to be surrounded by a 10 to 12-foot berm to cut down on any noise. Mature trees will be planted between the data center campus and its closest neighbor, the East Valley neighborhood, to create a buffer zone that is about 1,500-feet wide, Cherry Valley Village Administrator Jim Claeyssen said.

"They're a very quiet neighbor," Claeyssen said. "Even their new generator systems are much quieter than they used to be and they only run if there's a total dropout of power. They're going to take their power off the ComEd high power grid that runs down the county line. So there's nothing that has to come underground from out of the village."

Microsoft says it will invest in STEM education to prepare residents for high-tech jobs, local infrastructure and local suppliers.

State Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Cherry Valley, said he expects the data center to generate large amounts of property taxes for area taxing bodies and to be a better neighbor than other potential industrial uses that could have come to that land.

"It's one of those things that's good for a community's reputation that you have, a Microsoft cloud here," Syverson said. "Just like Rockford gets to say it has a Hard Rock, so it's one of those things that is really a win-win."

Jeff Kolkey writes about government, economic development and other issues for the Rockford Register Star. He can be reached at  (815) 987-1374, via email at jkolkey@rrstar.com and on X @jeffkolkey .

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Microsoft proposes Cherry Valley data center on 300 acres