As more days pass since the approval of T5 Data Centers’ new project in Grayslake, tension grows. With more layers progressively finding their way into this controversy of this project, many citizens of the Lake County village are left feeling uncertain about the data center.

In September 2024, the Grayslake Village Board approved the company T5 Data Centers to construct a new data center, which is to be located across 472 acres of land in southern Grayslake. In 2026, there has been a significant amount of action for and against this data center project, from the Grayslake Village Board and from residents of Lake County. As a result, some intense reactions have come from this controversy, even getting to a point where the Grayslake Village Board had to cancel a public comment session on Aug. 20, 2026 due to online threats made against their members. So what exactly is going on here, and what should Grayslake residents know about this?

What to know about the T5 data center:

• The data center construction site is located on Peterson Road in southern Grayslake in Lake County, IL.
• The proposed data center site is located across from Saddlebrook Farms, a retirement community.
• The campus site measures 472 acres and could cost up to $18 billion when finished, according to Grayslake’s FAQ sheet about the data center.
• According to datacenters.com, T5 currently has ten data centers across the country, not including current projects.

What has been done so far:

• Grayslake has been dealing with the data center issue for two years, holding six public meetings and five special comment sessions regarding it, according to Grayslake’s FAQ sheet about the data center.
• Grayslake granted T5 the first permit for construction on Sep. 1 2026 allowing construction across 800,000 square feet. This is only a small portion of the projected project.
• There is an ongoing lawsuit from the Preservation of Community Well-Being Collective, a local advocacy group, along with nine Lake County residents in attempt to stop construction of the campus.
• The Lake County Board has placed a ban on new data centers in unincorporated Lake County until May 2027. This does not affect the data center in Grayslake.

With 472 acres of land being used for this development, this is a significant change for Grayslake and Lake County as a whole. This has become a very important matter for many residents of Lake County.

On the side supportive of the data center, arguments have been made that a data center could bring economic and technological benefits, and that Grayslake could make use of the open area on Peterson Road by constructing one. “The development will bring lots of money in economic development to Grayslake,” an anonymous respondent to a Rampage poll said. Another anonymous respondent, who said they were neutral on the issue, said “The data center isn’t great, however that land has been sitting there with the use to one day be an industrial site.” According to Grayslake’s FAQ sheet regarding the development, the data center is estimated to generate $1.4 billion in non-homeowner property tax revenue in the first 20 years. As for jobs, the Grayslake board estimates between 700 and 1,000 jobs to be created during the development of the campus, and 1,200-1,600 jobs to be created from the campus itself, not including jobs from businesses supporting the data center, like maintenance. However, these projections have been disputed and questioned by opponents.

On the opposing side of the issue, there are two main points commonly made in protest of the data center. The first, and most common, is the environmental impact. “I’m worried mostly about the impact to our energy resources,” an anonymous respondent to a Rampage poll said. According to the Data Center List website, 17.4 billion gallons of water were consumed directly by all data centers in the U.S in 2023. However, the campus in Grayslake is planned to use a closed-loop cooling system, which consumes substantially less water than almost all other cooling systems, close to zero L/kWh (liters per kilowatt-hour.) Despite these statistics, some opponents still question the data center’s water consumption due to its hyperscale level. “Some of the information that still is yet to be learned about these massive data centers… could potentially turn the page for us,” Robin Weller, a resident of Saddlebrook Farms said. The other main argument of opponents to the data center is transparency of the Village and the data center’s effect on the community around it. Even though Grayslake has not signed any non-disclosure agreements with T5, many opponents feel like the community didn’t get enough of a voice on this issue.

“I feel sorry for the people who live [in Saddlebrook Farms]” Grayslake resident Colleen Spoden said. Saddlebrook Farms is a retirement community located very close to the the data center campus site. Robin Weller shared that she feels the data center is unfair to the residents in Saddlebrook. “We bought our homes thinking it would be our last [one],” she said. “None of us living [there] knew about it,” she said.