Project Cardinal Data Center Campus — Yorkville

Capacity: announced vs energized

Announced-to-energized gap: 1.80 GW. Every figure below is a single dated, sourced claim. Current best per series resolves by evidence tier, then date. See the methodology.

Promised online: 2029. 39 months away. Claimed by Pioneer Development, LLC (source).

Construction evidence

Dated satellite imagery of the site itself, oldest to newest, with the campus milestones that landed in each window. This is what the site looked like from orbit while announcements, permits, and energizations were dated into our ledger, so bare land, grading, and building mass tell their own story alongside the paper trail. Sentinel-2 true color, 10 m resolution, cloud-free scenes; click any frame to expand it.

Delivery paceAnnounced Q1 2026 · not yet energized

• 2026-03announced: 1.80 GW
• 2026-03Up-front payment to Yorkville under the development agreement · $51M
• 2026-06Host-community payment (developer to City of Yorkville) · $51M

Dated Sentinel-2 imagery, gated to hand-verified site coordinates. Milestones synthesized from the campus's own capacity ledger, financial claims, and lifecycle events; each chip links to its source. How we source and verify it: satellite construction evidence.

Key facts

On the data center map

Every tracked data center is on this map, centered on Project Cardinal Data Center Campus — Yorkville. Pan or zoom out to see how close rivals are building.

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The deal

developer

Pioneer Development, LLC · contract purchaser; end user undisclosed

utility

ComEd · full power allocation still pending

Power

Power source

grid

Grid operator

PJM

Interconnection

Waiting on the utility: ComEd had not granted the site a full power allocation as of March 2026, which the council was told must happen before the project can be finalised. Yorkville approved a development agreement on 10 March 2026 carrying a $51 million up-front payment over four years.

Water

Domestic use quantified, cooling makeup water not yet. Burns & McDonnell, the engineer of record, told Yorkville on 5 September 2025 that domestic demand is a draft 0.17 million gallons a day on average with air-cooled chillers, or 0.25 with water-cooled chillers and dry coolers, peaking at 0.31 and 0.44 respectively on a 1.8 peaking factor. Makeup water for the closed-loop system is explicitly undetermined at this stage, depending on end-user design and water quality, and no ongoing irrigation is assumed. Fire flow is estimated at 2,000 gallons per minute minimum at 20 psi.

The PJM grid demand right now: 84.0 GW (EIA-930, 2026-09-27 20:00). Project Cardinal Data Center Campus — Yorkville's announced 1.80 GW would be 2.1% of the grid's current load.

County water status: No drought in Kendall County, week of 2026-09-22 (US Drought Monitor). Data centers are large water users for cooling; this is the neutral local water picture.

Why here

Project Cardinal Data Center Campus — Yorkville sits on greenfield in Illinois, Yorkville. It connects to the PJM grid, draws on grid power, interconnection is Waiting on the utility: ComEd had not granted the site a full power allocation as of March 2026, which the council was told must happen before the project can be finalised. Yorkville approved a development agreement on 10 March 2026 carrying a $51 million up-front payment over four years.. This siting summary is composed from the record's held fields, not speculation; see methodology.

Financial structure

Host-community payment (developer to City of Yorkville)

$51M. $51M upfront commitment from Pioneer Development to the city, paid over four years, per the development agreement approved March 11, 2026 journalist report ↗

Up-front payment to Yorkville under the development agreement

$51M. Paid over four years; agreed 10 March 2026. journalist report ↗

Regulatory paper trail

The filings and rules on record for this site and its jurisdiction, most recent first. Each is a sourced, dated artifact you can follow to the primary document.

Investment, workforce and specs

Cooling

14 two-story data center buildings, ~17M sq ft total (11 bldgs ~1.9M sq ft each + 3 bldgs ~940,000 sq ft); two on-site substations and a switchyard source ↗

Water (gal/day)

170,000 source ↗

Timeline

1. Show 6 earlier updates
2. Aug 2026
   claim recorded
   metric:water_gpd=170000
3. Sep 2026
   Current: Permitted

Sources

• Project Cardinal Data Center Campus (case PZC 2025-08) ↗
• Yorkville data center approval comes after nearly 6-hour meeting ↗
• Yorkville data center approval comes after almost 6-hour contentious City Council meeting ↗ · Shaw Local
• Project Cardinal - Water Usage memo, Burns & McDonnell ↗ · City of Yorkville

1b2f6d79-9113-487a-aa09-6819682ce056 · Tracked with DEPLOY's verified-vs-claimed methodology. Every term is defined in the glossary. Announced numbers are claims, not built capacity.