Kenosha gives early approval to data center site

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Kenosha officials have given early approval to plans for acquiring and rezoning land for a data center.

The Kenosha City Plan Commission last week approved the city annexing land at the northeast corner of 136^th Avenue and Burlington Road from the town of Paris, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The site is northwest of the intersection between Interstate 94 and Wisconsin Highway 142 where Uline and Amazon warehouses stand.

The owners, left unnamed due to a non-disclosure agreement, want to rezone the land to a heavy manufacturing district and build four 250,000-square-foot data center buildings and a utility substation, a city agenda showed. They must get final approval from the Kenosha Common Council before construction starts.

Crews will connect the site to Kenosha water and sewer utilities and pave several access drives in the first phase of construction. After grading and access drive paving, the next phase will involve construction of data center buildings. The project is expected to take multiple years.

When construction starts, crews will connect the site to Kenosha water and sewer utilities and pave several access drives in the first phase of construction.

The landscaping plan will prioritize native plants, including old trees for screening the future data center. The project civil engineer will perform a traffic study on how development could affect local roads.

The planned data center is roughly 7  miles from the ongoing Microsoft data center campus in Pleasant Prairie.