Sangamon County Approved a 600 Megawatt CyrusOne Campus as a Conditional Use in a Farm Zone, on a Grain Elevator Analogy

The site is in Talkington Township, in the 13000 block of Thayer Road in the southwest corner of the county, near Waverly and across from the Double Black Diamond solar facility. The county's Merged Staff Report, prepared for the April 7, 2026 board meeting, describes a campus of approximately 1.8 million square feet in four buildings of roughly 450,000 square feet each on a 280 acre site, with each building expected to take about 12 to 18 months to build. We report the earlier figure too rather than quietly picking one: an Illinois Times account of the proposal described six buildings of about 250,000 square feet, totaling 1.5 million square feet. The plan changed between the two accounts.

The board did not arrive at a yes in one sitting. On March 23, 2026, after a long public comment period, a motion to table carried 15 to 13. On April 7, the board voted 23 to 5 to take the matter back off the table. A motion to postpone the decision to the regular May meeting, made on the argument that the Illinois legislature was then working on data center regulations and that the county should let that process run first, was defeated 11 to 17. The board then moved public comment forward and heard speakers for hours.

At the end, the chairman put the question in plain terms, recorded in the minutes: those wishing to grant the zoning would vote yes, those wishing to oppose the zoning would vote no. The clerk called the roll. The minutes record 17 yeas, 10 nays, and one abstention, and conclude: "The resolution was adopted and the zoning was granted."

Speakers at the April 7 meeting stated that the Zoning Board of Appeals had voted five to nothing to approve, and one board member said the zoning board found that the applicant met all the criteria for the conditional permitted use. We are reporting those as statements made on the record at the county board meeting. We did not obtain a Zoning Board of Appeals decision document confirming that tally.

Most of the approvals on this tracker came through a rezoning or a special or conditional use permit that everyone understood to be a land use decision about a data center. Sangamon County's is a conditional permitted use granted inside a district that already existed and was already agricultural. The county did not change the map.

The staff report explains the reasoning without hedging. Asked whether the proposed use is appropriately classified within the Agricultural zoning designation, staff answered yes, and wrote that "the property in question is currently zoned agricultural," that "a landowner always has the right to seek a different zoning classification," and that "it is the professional staff's opinion that the proposed use can be analogized to the operation of a large grain elevator and granting a conditional permitted use within the Agricultural zoning classification best protects the surrounding area which is agricultural."

Whether a 600 megawatt computing campus is usefully analogous to a grain elevator is exactly the kind of question a court would be asked to weigh, and we take no position on it. What we can say is what changes procedurally. A rezoning is a legislative act that changes the district itself. A variance is relief from a specific dimensional requirement. A conditional use is a determination that a listed use fits the district if stated criteria are met. Those three are reviewed differently in Illinois, on different records and sometimes on different clocks, and the county ordinance's own terms matter to which path applies. Our guide to zoning appeal deadlines by state lays out the Illinois timing beside eleven other states. Anyone weighing a challenge should have Illinois counsel confirm both the path and the deadline against the actual resolution text, which the minutes reference but do not reproduce.

Sangamon County is unusual on this tracker in that it regulated before it approved. Per the staff report, zoning and planning staff began researching data center issues in spring 2024, after discussions about large solar installations suggested similar large scale projects could follow. Staff presented recommendations to the board's zoning committee on March 20, 2025, the committee asked for changes, revised regulations were reviewed on May 15, 2025, the Zoning Board of Appeals considered them on June 19, 2025, and the county board adopted the final regulations on July 8, 2025. CyrusOne first contacted the zoning office on October 10, 2025, and its application was scheduled for an initial hearing on November 20, 2025. The county held a dedicated public hearing on December 3, 2025 at the Bank of Springfield Center. Staff counted ten public hearings, board meetings, and committee meetings over five months taking public comment.

What those regulations require, per the county's published answers: noise levels at the property line "shall not exceed fifty (50) decibels when located adjacent to an existing residence or residential district," lighting "shielded and downcast such that it does not spill onto adjacent parcels," a 150 foot setback from structure to property line plus a minimum of 750 feet to a residential structure, a landscaping screen within 500 feet of a residential structure, fencing, proof of an emergency plan submitted to the local responding district, and letters from the serving electric and water utilities. The county reports the nearest occupied residence is over half a mile from the proposed campus.

Then the part that deserves more attention than it has received. Asked why the county did not adopt a moratorium, the staff report answers: "Our legal counsel informs us that we have no authority to adopt moratoriums on zoning issues." It adds that the county can change its zoning rules at any time, that the process of considering changes "may act like a moratorium in that developers might pause to await any changes," and that as a practical matter a moratorium, if the county could adopt one, "probably couldn't have lasted much longer than the five months this matter has been under consideration." Residents continued to press the point for months. At the July 14, 2026 meeting, a speaker listed Illinois governments that had adopted temporary data center moratoriums, noted that a neighboring county's moratorium had been invalidated on procedural grounds rather than because moratoriums are unlawful, and urged the board to seek a second legal opinion.

We looked hard for a case and did not find one, and we are not going to imply otherwise.

Here is the single piece of evidence in the public record. At the county board's July 14, 2026 meeting, a member of the public speaking in opposition began, per the adopted minutes, "by expressing support for residents near Waverly, Loami, and surrounding areas who had filed a lawsuit challenging the CyrusOne project, describing their legal effort as an important step for local residents seeking to protect their communities."

That is a public comment recorded in adopted minutes. It is a member of the public characterizing a filing. It gives no case caption, no case number, no court, no named defendants, and no claims. No county official reported a suit on the record, and no 2026 county board minutes we reviewed, from March through August 11, show a closed session on pending litigation.

We could not obtain a court record. The Sangamon County Circuit Clerk does offer a free public case search that does not require registration, with searches by name, case number, and filing date, but it runs as a browser application: the page returns an empty container that a script fills in after it loads, so there is no address that returns results and no way to query it by fetching a URL. The statewide re:SearchIL repository refused automated access, and Sangamon County is not among the Illinois counties whose records are published on Judici. Several local outlets that carry Springfield news either blocked retrieval or returned no coverage of any filing.

So the honest status of this entry is no suit confirmed. If a case exists, it belongs on this tracker and we want it. Below is exactly how a person can settle it.

If you live near the site, or you are a reporter trying to pin down whether a case was filed, these are the specific records to request:

• The court file. Open the circuit clerk's public case search in a browser and run a name search for CyrusOne, for related corporate entities, and for Sangamon County, for 2026 civil filings. If nothing surfaces, the clerk's office at 200 South Ninth Street, Room 405 in Springfield answers by phone at 217-753-6674 and by email at the address on its records page.
• The county's side of it. A Freedom of Information Act request to the Sangamon County State's Attorney for any complaint served on the county concerning the data center approval will resolve the question from the defendant's end even if the docket is hard to search.
• The resolution itself. Ask the county clerk for the adopted zoning resolution and any conditions attached to it. The April 7 minutes record that the zoning was granted but do not reproduce the operative text, and that text is what a challenge would be aimed at.
• The zoning board record. Ask the Zoning Board of Appeals for its findings and vote on the application. Speakers said the vote was five to nothing; the document settles it.

If the campus gets built and the noise is what concerns you, the county gave you a number to hold it to: 50 decibels at a property line adjacent to a residence. That is enforceable in a way that vague promises are not, and it is only useful if someone measures. Start a dated log now, before construction, so you have a baseline: readings at your own property line, times, weather, and how the sound affects sleep. Our evidence guide covers what to keep, and noise limits by jurisdiction shows how the county's 50 decibel line compares with what other places require.

If a project is still at the proposal stage where you live, the Sangamon sequence is the argument for engaging early rather than at the final vote. The rules that governed this campus were written in 2024 and 2025, before any applicant appeared, and by April 2026 staff were answering resident proposals by pointing to provisions already in the ordinance. Our guide to fighting a proposed data center covers that sequence, and Illinois's two pending challenges are on the tracker in Grayslake and Joliet. Our Illinois page has the statewide picture.

If a facility near you is already operating and affecting your home, our free case review connects you with an independent attorney in our network who handles data center matters in Illinois, at no cost and with no obligation.

CyrusOne published a community question and answer page for the Sangamon County project, and the county reproduced much of it on its own informational site. In the company's words, the project represents "nearly $500 million in capital investment," hundreds of construction jobs during development, and more than 100 permanent full time positions once operational, with local hiring priority through county workforce programs.

On water, the company says it uses closed loop cooling and that "after the initial fill, there is no daily water usage for cooling since the system remains closed," with each building expected to use approximately 1,100 gallons per day on average, comparable to a standard office building. On sound, the company says its facilities are designed to meet and exceed local noise regulations, that its design team includes acoustic consultants who measure expected levels at property boundaries before construction, and that backup generators run only 10 to 15 hours per year for maintenance and testing and in rare outages, housed in sound attenuated enclosures with critical grade exhaust silencers. On lighting, it says all fixtures are directed downward with no uplighting. The company states it is entering an Agricultural Impact Mitigation Agreement with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, and it invites residents with concerns once the site is operational to contact it directly.

The company also says it is not requesting any property tax abatement for the project. We are reporting these as the company's public statements, not as verified outcomes.