A Midwestern developer is quietly circling a hulking former petrochemicals campus on the Naperville-Warrenville line as a possible home for a new data center and manufacturing complex. The property at 150 W. Warrenville Road, straddling the DuPage and Naperville border, runs roughly 168 to 169 acres. Karis says the idea is still in the exploratory stage and that no purchase or formal proposal is on the table.
As reported by Data Center Dynamics, Karis Critical recently briefed local officials about the INEOS property and asked for feedback on the site. A memo reviewed by the paper outlines that outreach, and Karis spokesman Patrick Skarr told the Sun the company has "made no decision" about whether to pursue an investment and "does not own the property."
Site power and scale
The Illinois Economic Development Corporation notes the INEOS campus is currently vetted to supply about 27 MW of electric load and is "vetted for 100+ MW with a ~3–4-year lead time," putting it among the more power-ready parcels in the Chicago market. Those utility advantages, paired with onsite fiber and direct road access, help explain why former industrial campuses are catnip for big compute projects. For the site's utility profile, see Illinois Economic Development Corporation.
The property on offer
Commercial brokers are pitching the campus as a roughly 169-acre assemblage zoned ORI (office, research, light industrial) at the cusp of Naperville and Warrenville, with quick connections to I-88 and O'Hare. The JLL offering brochure leans hard on the parcel's size, flexible zoning and infill location for research, manufacturing or other regional users. JLL lists the full property details.
What Karis might build
According to reporting in Data Center Dynamics, Karis could float a plan for a roughly 125,000-square-foot data center on the site, paired with more than 1,000,000 square feet of manufacturing or industrial space. Karis' own materials show the firm is actively stitching together power-ready land across the United States, including projects in DeKalb, New Albany and Aiken. Karis provides the company overview and pipeline information.
Local memory of a rejected plan
Naperville residents and officials have not forgotten Karis' earlier push at the former Alcatel-Lucent campus, where the council voted 6-1 to reject the proposal after months of packed hearings and complaints about generator noise and air quality. With that recent history still fresh, any new Karis outreach tied to the INEOS site is almost certain to draw intense public scrutiny.
What happens next
For now, brokers continue to market the campus and Karis has not bought the property, so the timeline is straightforward: a sale, a formal proposal if a buyer and operator step up, then zoning review, environmental work and any needed utility upgrades. The Illinois EDC vetting suggests the land could scale to far larger compute loads, but real-world buildout would be dictated by transmission improvements and local approvals. JLL still lists the campus as available.
