McHenry County is looking to implement a 12-month ban on new data centers in unincorporated areas after a county board leader said data centers are “going to arrive here whether we want them to or not.”
The McHenry County Planning, Environment and Development Committee is scheduled to consider a data center moratorium ordinance during its Tuesday morning meeting at the McHenry County Administration Building in Woodstock.
The ordinance is listed on the committee’s routine consent agenda and is set to go before the full McHenry County Board for a vote on November 17, according to county meeting documents.
The moratorium would halt the submission, receipt, processing, review and approval of any application that would allow a data center to be established in unincorporated McHenry County.
That includes requests for zoning map amendments, Unified Development Ordinance text amendments, conditional use permits, use determinations, site plan reviews, variances and building permits.
The county’s Unified Development Ordinance, which sets zoning and land use rules for unincorporated areas, does not currently define data centers as a permitted or conditional use in any zoning district.
The ordinance describes a data center as “a facility or portion of a facility which houses computer or network equipment, systems, servers, appliances, and associated mechanical, electrical, backup power storage and/or generation and cooling infrastructure for the purposes of collection, storage, management, processing, and transmission of digital data.”
The definition covers standalone buildings, portions of buildings and larger multi-building data center campuses, which the ordinance said are distinct from general industrial, office or warehouse uses.
The county board “deems it necessary and in the best interest of the public health, safety, and welfare to impose a temporary, twelve (12)-month moratorium on the acceptance, processing, review, and issuance of any zoning approvals or permits for data centers,” the ordinance said.
The moratorium would take effect immediately once passed and remain in place for 12 months unless the board makes other changes to it.
The moratorium would apply only to unincorporated areas and not to cities and villages, which set their own zoning rules.
County board members have raised data centers at several meetings this year.
McHenry County Board member Pamela Althoff said at a May 14 Committee of the Whole meeting that the board had received numerous public comments and emails about data centers.
Althoff said template ordinances addressing data centers were being reviewed by both the Planning, Environment and Development Committee and the Law and Government Committee and credited board members Deena Krieger and Brian Sager for advancing the work.
McHenry County Board Vice Chair Joseph Gottemoller last month asked McHenry County Planning and Development Director Adam Wallen and the Planning, Environment and Development Committee to update the county’s zoning ordinance to cover data centers.
Gottemoller said data centers “are going to arrive here whether we want them to or not” and that it “would at least make sense that we cover them in our ordinance.”
“And I know from experience, it’s not there today,” Gottemoller said.
McHenry County Administrator Scott Hartman told the board’s Law and Government Committee last week that the moratorium ordinance would go before the Planning, Environment and Development Committee the following week.
Hartman said the proposal was “similar to Lake County” and its eight-month moratorium and was “being proposed to give P&D time to develop the standards,” referring to the county’s Planning and Development Department.
The Lake County Board approved an eight-month moratorium on data centers in unincorporated Lake County on September 8 that remains in effect through May 2027.
Lake County officials said at the time that it had not received any proposals to develop a data center in its unincorporated areas.
The McHenry County ordinance does not mention any specific data center proposal and it is unclear whether the county has received any inquiries for data centers in unincorporated areas.