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Aurora, Ill., Okays Data Storage Company Expansion

The city has annexed 22.5 acres of land so that CyrusOne can add 425,000 square feet dedicated to data storage.

(TNS) -- The Aurora City Council has approved several items to allow CyrusOne, a data storage company, to expand at its Aurora site.

Aldermen unanimously approved an annexation agreement for almost 22.5 acres south of Diehl Road for CyrusOne, LLC, which is located on the southwest corner of Diehl and Eola roads.

"This is part of our grand vision, to be in Aurora," a CyrusOne spokesman said at this week's council meeting.

The spokesman said the expansion is part of a total $400 million investment the firm has in Aurora. Overall, according to the company's website, the Aurora site would have 425,000 square feet dedicated to data storage.

He said that while it does not generate the same kind of jobs, "this is the equivalent of Amazon coming ..." Amazon is building two distribution facilities in Aurora that will bring up to 1,000 jobs to the city.

In addition to approving the annexation, the council rezoned the property for a combination of uses on three different lots.

One lot would be Office, Research and Light Industrial zoning for the expansion of CyrusOne, which already is underway. The company is building a 310,000-square-foot, two-story data center next to the current data center. Some 6,500 square feet of the building would be offices.

A second lot received conservation, open space and drainage district zoning, because it will hold a detention pond for property drainage.

The third lot was zoned estate single-family detached dwelling district zoning. That lot would include 40 feet of right-of-way dedicated to the city along Molitor Road. CyrusOne has said the company has nothing planned for that property right now.

The data center is one of 24 the Dallas-based company has in the country, but it is one of its most significant. It handles data for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as well as a number of foreign exchanges.

Overall, CyrusOne serves nine of the Fortune 20 and 180 of the Fortune 1000 companies among its more than 950 customers, according to its website.

CyrusOne already has caused telecommunications companies to want to locate antennas as close to the company as possible, because of the financial exchange information stored there.

Every bit closer a communication antenna can get to CyrusOne is all the sooner it can get and process the data from the Mercantile Exchange. In the trading business, every second counts, city officials said.

It is a hot spot because the location is similar to only one other place in the country, in New Jersey, which hosts data storage for the New York Stock Exchange.

CyrusOne also has approval from the city, given about a year ago, to build a 350-foot tower at the site.

The City Council is in the midst of considering approval for another company, Scientel Solutions, to locate its headquarters across Eola Road from CyrusOne.

©2017 The Beacon-News (Aurora, Ill.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.