As Metro East towns are grappling with the interest of a major developer looking to build three massive data centers in the area — and all the money, jobs and controversy those bring — the city of Edwardsville offered what appeared to be a reassuring message to its residents.
In a post on the city’s official Facebook page on Feb. 10, it noted that while data centers were a hot topic in the Metro East and that the city had gotten “an inquiry” on the process to build such a center in town, it had received “no formal proposal.”
But that post does not tell the full story, according to dozens of emails reviewed by Illinois Answers Project between top Edwardsville city officials and a firm looking to develop massive data centers in the region.
For almost a year, the developer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure, has discussed in detail a proposal and site selection in Edwardsville with city and county officials, according to the nearly two dozen emails reviewed by Illinois Answers.
Between May and November last year, city and Madison County officials discussed with Cloverleaf representatives questions and details about land surveys, the special-use permit process and technical issues. Cloverleaf has had an engineering firm working on the project, the emails show.
Jeff Lake, who’s overseeing the data center development for Cloverleaf, said discussions with Edwardsville are continuing but no recent conversations have happened as “a few other things … have been a little more pressing for us,” and Cloverleaf is awaiting information from a local utility.
“We’re waiting on information yet from Ameren on a little more detail of some electrical connection points,” Lake said.
The city of Edwardsville drew a distinction between Cloverleaf providing a conceptual site plan, which is typically less detailed, and a formal proposal.
Cloverleaf has provided a conceptual site plan, “but that is neither a formal proposal nor a … planned unit development request,” according to a statement from Eric Williams, the Edwardsville city administrator. The public hearing process starts after the city receives a formal proposal, the city said.
“It’s worth noting that we frequently are contacted by developers who want to explore locations, requirements and the process for locating a business in Edwardsville,” according to the statement. “These inquiries may span a single call or email or may continue for weeks or months. However, many of these don’t progress beyond conversations.”
The emails exchanged between Cloverleaf, Edwardsville and Madison County officials reflect the type of behind-the-scenes discussions about data centers that are common in communities across Illinois and the country. Data centers are massive facilities that require unprecedented amounts of power and water, often operated by “hyperscale” companies like Google and Meta to support cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The data center development proposals come at a time when revenue-starved municipalities and counties operating with squeezed budgets need money to improve schools and repair aging roads, bridges and utilities. Local unions often cheer the influx of jobs that come with the construction of the huge data centers. But residents worry that the centers could bring pollution, hurt their home values and jack up their utility bills. And they are concerned, in some instances, that local officials announce the data center projects late in the process, when planning is well underway and the time for public input is short.
The proposals also come as Illinois legislators are exploring regulations for new data centers. In his State of the State address Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker called for a two-year pause on development incentives for data centers. Pritzker has previously said he expects the companies that operate data centers to pay for any strain they put on the energy grid.
Robert Yost, 38, is a financial analyst and has lived in Edwardsville for two decades. In an email to Illinois Answers, Yost spelled out his “grave concerns” about data center developments in the Metro East. They include environmental, political and social impacts.
“Our air quality in this region is already notoriously poor,” Yost said in his email. “My daughter has asthma, and we all struggle with particulate matter and poor air quality on certain days.” He’s also not convinced the tax benefits will be as “great as they are touted” and expressed concerns about the effects of artificial intelligence on the workforce.
The Facebook post by Edwardsville came after an Illinois Answers reporter asked Edwardsville Mayor Art Risavy at an unrelated public event on Feb. 9 about the potential Edwardsville data center site. Risavy said he didn’t know anything about it; he is not copied on any of the emails reviewed by Illinois Answers.
The next day, the city posted its statement on Facebook, which reads in part:/
“It’s well known that there has been interest expressed in building data centers in Madison County,” the post said. “However, there is no formal proposal for a data center currently before the Edwardsville City Council or any other city body or committee with approval authority.”
Other communities have put data center discussions on hold. Godfrey trustees passed a six-month moratorium on Jan. 20, the longest the village is able to pass, on accepting data center applications. The Collinsville planning commission passed a similar one-year moratorium at the end of 2025.
“While data centers benefit the owners and the developers, there appears to be a large social cost to the community (kinda like solar fields),” Godfrey Economic Development Director Jim Mager said in a Dec. 4 email to the town’s mayor and other officials.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure, based in Houston and Seattle and founded in 2023, received $300 million from private equity investors for data center projects. Developers broke ground last year on one site in Port Washington, Wisconsin, that Cloverleaf partnered on. Neighbors there have organized and started multiple Facebook groups to oppose the development, and one group made an unsuccessful attempt to recall the mayor.
Cloverleaf is pursuing two other projects in Georgia, one in Columbia County, about 130 miles east of Atlanta, and another in Monroe County, about 60 miles south of Atlanta.
The prospective Edwardsville data center site is mainly south of New Poag Road between U.S. 255 and Illinois Route 111. A two-story home off New Poag Road is the only residence on the property. Its owner said he wasn’t at liberty to comment on the sale of the land.
The site is about 6 miles west of downtown Edwardsville at the northern end of the Gateway Commerce Center, a stretch of Interstate 255 dotted with warehouses and distribution centers. It’s about 3 miles west of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s outdoor recreational fields. A spokeswoman from the university said she wasn’t aware of any discussions at the university on the topic and did not provide further comment.
In a podcast interview, one of Cloverleaf’s co-founders, Brian Janous, a former Microsoft executive who spent his high school years in St. Louis, said Cloverleaf would never try to construct a data center next to a neighborhood. But that’s what the developer proposed in Troy, located about 10 miles south of Edwardsville.
In an interview, Lake said he was unaware of the full context of Janous’ comment but argued it was in relation to Cloverleaf’s commitment to “responsible development.” Putting data centers in too rural of an area can place a burden on infrastructure, Lake said, and traffic burdens can be more extensive. The company tries to locate projects near major highways and interstates.
“In our mind, there should be some assumption of development at some point in the future,” Lake said. “If you assume the field behind your home is going to be a field forever, that’s probably a poor assumption.”
In November, residents in Troy started a Facebook group where they posted emails they received from the city of Troy under Illinois open records law that revealed conversations between Cloverleaf representatives and city officials. At two public meetings in February, dozens of Troy residents spoke out against a data center setting up shop anywhere in their city.
Troy officials were considering two different potential sites for the project — both near neighborhoods. The city needs money for its schools and in the near future, a new sewer plant and a new water plant, Mayor David Nonn said, and a project like this could have helped. In a Facebook post on his own page on Feb. 17, Madison County Board Chairman Chris Slusser made a post proposing “a revitalization of the hollowed-out Route 3 corridor” and indicating the two Troy sites are not compatible for data center development.
Residents of nearby communities hope their city leaders will come to the same conclusion.
Already, Granite City residents are concerned and opposed to a data center there, like their neighbors in Troy. One of the areas that’s been floated as a possible data center site is near Kindra Justice’s house, where she lives with her husband, her mother and her 14-year-old daughter.
Justice, 47, said she and her family like Granite City and don’t want to move but she doesn’t want to be stuck with a house she can’t sell. Nothing, she said, would change her mind about allowing a data center in Granite City.
“I don’t feel there’s an amount of money I can put on my community … on my sanity,” Justice said.
Taylor Wyatt, 33, lives in Granite City with her husband and two children, ages 15 and 8. Wyatt grew up in Granite City. Like Justice, she’s concerned a data center will extract more than it gives to the city and its residents.
“I feel good that they’re looking into it more, but I’m always going to question whether or not it’s enough because these big companies, they’re not to be played with,” Wyatt said. “They have better lawyers, better representation, and they’re not here to benefit us.”
On Feb. 5 in Granite City, located about 16 miles southwest of Edwardsville, the city’s plan commission postponed a zoning change that would allow data centers. Granite City Mayor Mike Parkinson said in a recent interview there’s no formal offer on the table. The Illinois Answers Project requested emails between Granite City and Cloverleaf, and found city officials were having discussions about zoning and potential sites, similar to the conversations in Edwardsville.
Parkinson said Granite City, a known industrial hub, hasn’t always regulated factories well in the past, and that he wants to make sure the zoning is done right.
“We want to hold them accountable for air and water quality issues,” Parkinson said in an interview with an Illinois Answers reporter. “That’s where the disconnect with the public is. We can’t put the cart before the horse. We have to go through that process to protect the public from having a factory in their backyard or a racket at night so people can’t sleep and go to work,” Parkinson said.
Slusser, the Madison County Board chairman, attended the meeting in Troy on Feb. 10 and said in an interview that he didn’t know about Cloverleaf’s interest in the area until last fall. Nor did he know much about the project in Edwardsville.
“I’m not trying to push it on anybody,” Slusser said in an interview. “If a community says they don’t want it, then their city council needs to follow the will of the people.”
