Chicago is the third largest city in the United States and has been a major financial and commercial hub in the American Midwest for decades. Numerous factors helped fuel and sustain data center growth in Chicago in recent years. The Chicago market is attractive to data center users for its favorable business climate, competitive colocation/cloud environment, relatively low power cost, and low risk of natural disasters.

Downtown Chicago attracts enterprise users able to afford the higher overall costs of doing business within the urban core. However, the downtown data centers tend to be relatively small in size. Contrast that to data center development in the western suburbs of Elk Grove Village and Franklin Park where providers have more room to build large colocation facilities. Furthermore, colocation users find the Chicago market attractive because of its central location and proximity to large, corporate businesses. Companies searching for data centers in the Chicago market include those in the financial, technology, telecom, insurance, and healthcare industries.