Compass Datacenters is turning the 273-acre former Sears HQ in Hoffman Estates into a $10 billion, five-building hyperscale campus, with the first two 250,000+ square foot shells already going up.
This is clearly positioned for large AI and cloud tenants, with interior buildouts left tenant-specific, likely to accommodate dense GPU racks and evolving power/cooling needs.
Compass is building an on-site electrical substation and extending utility connections in parallel, signaling serious power provisioning, which is the gating factor for AI capacity.
They are leaning hard into lower embodied carbon and water-free cooling, using CarbonCure concrete, ConcreteAI optimization, and HVO-based backup fuels to reduce both CO2 and water draw.
The 14–16 month timeline per building and three- to four-year full build window fits a phased AI capacity ramp, aligning with how hyperscalers want to stage GPU deployments and avoid stranded power.
Local officials emphasize Compass is on schedule and recycling 95% of the Sears teardown, which matters for permitting and community acceptance around a long-lived AI data center hub.
For anyone tracking where the next Midwestern AI power base will land, this piece adds useful color on Compass’s design choices, sustainability posture, and build cadence.
Source: After Sears teardown, walls are going up for Hoffman Estates data center campus
