Minooka Village President offers many updates during State of the Village address

It’s been a busy time for Minooka, with the Canadian National logistics hub project coming to the area, a 400 acre data center coming in, and a developer looking to bring 400 more homes to the area, and Village President Ric Offerman touched on a bit of all of it during the State of the Village Address.

Offerman said depositions just wrapped up in the village’s lawsuit against Canadian National, which it filed to see if it would be allowed to enforce already-existing weight limits on Ridge Road to prevent increased semi traffic.

“We’re not against the project,” Offerman said. “We don’t have any control. 93% of it is in Channahon. The only problem we have is we don’t want their truckings coming through Minooka.”

Offerman said their boundaries go all the way down to Route 6, and the logistics hub is only a couple of miles from Brisbin Road, so Minooka’s hope is that the semis head that direction and stay off of Ridge Road.

He also shared an update on an Equinix data center being planned, a several billion dollar investment that would put seven new buildings on 300 acres of land north of Minooka. Offerman said it would bring around $8 million in utility tax and an additional $20 million in property taxes, along with 100-200 permanent jobs and several hundred indirect jobs.

There were concerns, however, that the data center would use up a large portion of the village’s water: It was initially expected that it would use six million gallons of water per day at a time when Minooka is becoming part of the Grand Prairie Water Commission, a group of six communities collaborating on a $1.5 billion project to bring in water from Lake Michigan.

“They came in last week and said they’ve reconsidered, and they believe they’re going to go with air-cooled computers, so the water won’t be needed,” Offerman said.

Equinix is a Redwood City, Calif. company that has over 260 data centers in 33 different countries.

Offerman also said Interstate 80 was widened to allow for more lanes and added sound barriers to improve the quality of life for Minooka residents.