A 67-year-old Belvidere man is facing felony charges after a city council member told police he was threatened with being shot if he voted to approve a controversial data center project. Richard D. Grollemond was arrested the day after the alleged threat was reported and is now being held at the Boone County Jail with no bond.
According to Rockford News First, the Belvidere Police Department received a report from a city council member on Nov. 3 alleging that a man was threatening to shoot him if he voted to approve a data center project. Detectives obtained an arrest warrant the following day, Nov. 4, and booked Grollemond into jail. As reported by MyStateline, Grollemond was arrested after allegedly threatening to kill a council member if the data center plan was approved.
Grollemond is charged with one count of threatening a public official and one count of harassment through electronic communications, both felonies. Police say he could face up to eight years in prison if convicted. He is awaiting a pretrial hearing, and no further details about the specific allegations behind the threat have been made public.
What Is Project Hawkeye?
The threat is tied to Project Hawkeye, a proposed three-gigawatt data center on land along Genoa Road south of Interstate 90; Chicago-based Datawatt Energy, a power developer, would arrange the project's power needs, per a report from mystateline.com. The project had been placed on the Belvidere City Council agenda only as a discussion item, and no formal decision or vote had been made at that meeting, according to the same report.
The timeline of when the city and DataWatt first began talking remains unsettled. One mystateline.com report states that discussions between Belvidere leaders and DataWatt representatives have been consistent since late 2024, while Mayor Clinton Morris has said the city's initial introduction to the developer took place in early 2025. As of a Rock River Current report published in September, Morris said the city had received no specific project details, site plans, or information about the project's scope.
Residents Have Packed Meetings in Opposition
Opposition to Project Hawkeye has been loud and consistent. Roughly 100 residents attended a Belvidere City Council meeting to express opposition to the potential development, and every community member who spoke during that meeting voiced opposition to the proposal, according to mystateline.com. Residents have cited concerns over local water supplies, electricity grid demands, noise levels and property values.
Public sentiment around data centers has hardened well beyond Belvidere. A Gallup poll cited by the Rock River Current found that seven in 10 Americans oppose building artificial-intelligence data centers in their area, with 48% strongly opposed. In Belvidere specifically, a change.org petition opposing or raising concerns about Project Hawkeye had gathered nearly 2,000 verified signatures as of a Tuesday afternoon referenced in that report.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Threats
Grollemond's case fits into a broader national pattern documented by CNN, which reviewed more than 100 police reports filed since the previous year and found dozens of threats tied to data center development. A September CNN poll found that nearly nine in 10 Americans say they are more concerned than excited about data center growth nationally.
A similar case unfolded in Illinois earlier this year, when Anthony Hinojosa was arrested in February over an alleged threat connected to a separate proposed data center. He later faced felony charges for intimidation and harassment through electronic communication, according to CNN's reporting. It remains unclear whether Grollemond's pretrial hearing has been scheduled, and no additional details about the circumstances of the alleged threat in Belvidere have been released.
