Elk Grove just sold a data center for $750 million. Here's why Lake County should pay attention.

Styx Market Watch Lake County 6 min read September 2026

If you own a home in Grayslake, Round Lake, Hainesville, or anywhere near Peterson and Alleghany, you have probably heard the phrase "data center" more in the last two months than in your whole life. You may have seen the lawn signs. You may have wondered, quietly, what it does to the value of your house.

Then this week a deal in Elk Grove Village showed exactly how much money is chasing these buildings. Let me connect the dots, because the Elk Grove story and the Grayslake story are the same story, told in two very different towns.

What happened in Elk Grove

On September 9, The Real Deal reported that GI Partners, a San Francisco investment firm, paid a record $750 million for a single data center at 800 East Devon Drive in Elk Grove Village. That building last sold in 2024 for about $712 million, in two pieces: $440 million for the property and another $272 million that only paid out once the previous owner, Prologis, finished converting it into a data center.

Read that again. A warehouse-sized building near O'Hare went from an industrial box to a $750 million asset in about two years because of what is inside it.

Elk Grove Village now has 20 operating data centers and, per media reports, expects to add 19 more. The town calls itself the Data Center Capital of the Midwest. Its mayor, Craig Johnson, is the most outspoken data center supporter in the suburbs. His argument is simple: the centers paid the village about $26 million last year, and in strong years the town has mailed $200 gift cards to residents as a tax rebate.

That is the pro case, and it is a real one.

What happened in Lake County, the same week

On September 8, the Lake County Board voted unanimously to ban new data centers in unincorporated Lake County for eight months, through May 11, 2027. Board member Esiah Campos summed it up in four words: "We choose our citizens."

The moratorium does not touch the villages. Which matters, because the biggest data center fight in the county is inside one.

Grayslake approved the T5 @ Chicago IV campus between September 2024 and May 2025: 472 acres near Peterson and Alleghany, up to 10 million square feet of buildings, and a power demand of about 1.55 gigawatts. For scale, that is roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor, sitting across the road from Saddlebrook Farms and down the street from Arbor Vista. The village issued the first building permit on September 1 for an 800,000 square foot facility.

Nine residents and a community group sued on July 31 to stop it. They argue the project was code-named on agendas so nobody knew what it was, that it does not fit the village's own comprehensive plan, and that a use this size was approved under a zoning category that does not exist. The next status hearing is October 30.

So in one week: a record sale in a town that loves data centers, and a countywide pause in a county that is not sure it does.

Two towns, one industry, opposite conversations

Elk Grove's data centers sit by the airport. Grayslake's sit next to subdivisions. That difference is the whole argument.

The dates that matter

• Sept 2024 to May 2025Grayslake approves the T5 @ Chicago IV campus: 472 acres, up to 10 million sq ft.
• July 31, 2026Nine residents and a community group file suit to stop the project.
• Sept 1, 2026Grayslake issues the first building permit, an 800,000 sq ft facility.
• Sept 8, 2026Lake County Board votes unanimously to ban new data centers in unincorporated areas for eight months.
• Sept 9, 2026GI Partners pays a record $750 million for one Elk Grove data center.
• October 30, 2026Next status hearing in the Grayslake lawsuit. Circle this one.
• May 11, 2027County moratorium expires, unless the county writes new rules first.

The question everyone is really asking

Does a data center next door hurt my home value?

I am going to give you the honest answer, which is that nobody has clean local data yet, and anyone who tells you a confident number is guessing. Grayslake's campus has not been built. There are no resale comps next to a 1.5 gigawatt facility in Lake County because one has never existed here.

What I can tell you is how buyers think, because I talk to them every week.

Distance and sightline matter more than the headline. A buyer standing in a backyard on Alleghany looking at a construction fence and hearing diesel backup generators tested on a Tuesday afternoon reacts one way. A buyer in downtown Grayslake three miles away, who reads about it in the paper, reacts very differently. Elk Grove's data centers sit in an industrial park by the airport. Grayslake's sit next to subdivisions. That difference is the whole argument.

The tax base is real but slow. Elk Grove's $26 million did not show up in year one. If Grayslake's campus is built and taxed the way the village expects, residents may eventually see relief on the levy. "Eventually" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and a lawsuit in the way stretches it further.

Your electric bill is the hidden piece. The Citizens Utility Board has said flatly that large data centers are raising grid costs for everyone. ComEd says it has a tariff to make data centers pay their own way. Governor Pritzker is pushing legislation that would require data centers to generate as much power as they draw. Where that lands affects every homeowner in the ComEd territory, whether you live near a campus or not.

Quick answers

Jimmy Styx, Broker, @properties Christie's International Real Estate. Real estate. Real advice.