T5 Data Centers Buys Suburban Chicago Land for $17 Million

The internet’s growing backbone has injected fresh capital into suburban Chicago’s land market.

Atlanta-based tech infrastructure developer T5 Data Centers paid $17 million to buy nearly 89 acres in the northern suburb of Grayslake, public records show. The deal follows its $29 million purchase last year of a nearby plot of more than 134 acres from Wilmette-based real estate firm Alter Group.

An LLC managed by longtime Grayslake landowner and businessman Daniel Beelow — the third generation behind his family’s namesake steakhouse in neighboring Lake Zurich — was the seller in the deal. The land encompasses acreage along Peterson and Ivanhoe roads to the west and north of the Hindu Mandir of Lake County, records show.

Data center developers have been scrambling for land in suburban Chicago, including by buying up outdated office and industrial complexes with plans to demolish or repurpose any buildings on the sites into cloud storage or other tech-related facilities as the private sector rushes to meet the growing demands of artificial intelligence and overall computing power.

T5’s acquisition propels its plan to develop a massive data center campus with a capacity of 480 megawatts, starting with an initial building of a 60-megawatt capacity expected to be complete by 2027.

The original proposal was targeting 160 acres. With its purchase of the Beelow land combined with Alter Group’s last year, T5 now controls far more land. It’s unclear if its ambition for the area has grown since the proposal was discussed last year.

Alter got a higher price per acre at about $216,000 — with T5 having an option to buy an additional 45 acres from Alter. Beelow’s sale came out to $191,440 per acre, although it’s unknown how the option for an additional purchase from Alter impacted the pricing of either deal.

Neither T5 nor the Beelows returned requests for comment.

Alter Group’s deal with T5 last year represented a significant shift for the seller’s once-grand plans for the area. The firm — which is led by Michael Alter, owner of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky — has been a large local landowner with development hopes of its own for over 15 years. Its 641-acre vision known as the Cornerstone business park was approved by Grayslake officials back in 2009 and stayed largely dormant until Medline’s 1.4 million-square-foot facility opened three years ago.

Richard Gatto, executive vice president of Alter, said last year that T5’s development unlocks the potential of Cornerstone’s remaining 200 acres south of Peterson Road, ushering in its second phase of development.