Bloomington has put its proposed data center rules on paper. The City’s draft text amendments to the Zoning Code — Case No. Z-07-26 — go before the Planning Commission at a public hearing on Friday, October 16, 2026, at 4:00 p.m., at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, with a second session set for Monday, November 16.
The draft is long and technical, and most of the coverage has focused on noise and water. Those matter. But if you own land in or near Bloomington — especially manufacturing-zoned ground, or farmland on the edge of town — three provisions matter more: a size line that sorts every project into a category, an aggregation rule that decides which category yours is in, and a 1,000-foot buffer that decides how much land a large project consumes and whose land it falls on.
Everything below comes from the City’s own staff report and draft text, published on its Data Center Information Hub. It is a draft. Staff has said plainly that it expects to change it after hearing testimony.
How we got here
On May 26, 2026, the City Council adopted Ordinance No. 2026-050, a six-month moratorium on the submission or processing of applications for data centers with a design capacity over 5 megawatts. The same ordinance directed staff to prepare a comprehensive set of land use regulations. The draft is that work product. Staff reports it is drawn heavily from the City of Aurora’s recent data center ordinances and from McLean County’s own amendment (ZA26-01), supplemented by local public comment. Notice of the hearing was published in The Pantagraph on September 25, 2026.
Bloomington is a home rule municipality under Article VII, Section 6(a) of the Illinois Constitution, which gives home rule status to any municipality with more than 25,000 residents. That matters for what follows: the City is writing these rules with broad local authority, and these rules govern land inside city limits. Unincorporated McLean County has its own regime, and the Town of Normal is running a separate process. We walked through the county-level picture in Data Centers in Central Illinois: What Your County Can — and Can’t — Do.
The size line: 10 acres or 10 megawatts
The draft creates three categories:
| Category | Definition | Where allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Accessory | Inside a building with another primary use, and incidental to it | Not in residential districts |
| Commercial | Primary use, under 10 acres and under 10 MW | Permitted in M-2; special use in M-1, B-1, C-1 and D-3 |
| Hyperscale | Primary use, 10 acres or more, or 10 MW or more | Special use in M-2 only, approved by the City Council |
Note the word or. A project crosses into hyperscale by meeting either threshold. A compact building on six acres that draws 12 MW is hyperscale. So is a low-power campus on eleven acres.
The draft also closes an obvious workaround: an accessory or commercial data center that later expands into hyperscale brings the entire development under the hyperscale rules.
The aggregation rule: your parcel may not be the project
This is the provision a landowner is most likely to misread. For purposes of the size thresholds, the draft says multiple buildings, phases, parcels, lots, sites, tenants, owners, operators, applicants and development entities are counted together when they are any one of the following:
- contiguous or adjacent;
- sharing, or proposed to share, infrastructure or access;
- under common ownership or control, or owned or controlled by affiliated entities;
- developed under a common or coordinated development plan; or
- otherwise a common, related or functionally integrated data center development.
Separate parcels, subdivisions, LLCs, tenants or phases “shall not be used to avoid classification.” Acreage includes the whole site supporting the development — buildings, setbacks, yards, parking, internal roads, stormwater facilities, cooling, substations, generators, battery storage and security facilities. And an intervening road, utility easement, railroad right-of-way or drainage feature does not break contiguity.
What it means in practice: if a developer is optioning eight acres from you and twelve from your neighbor, you are not looking at a commercial project on eight acres. You are likely looking at part of a hyperscale project, with a special use hearing, a community benefits agreement and the 1,000-foot buffer. The first question to ask is not what they are paying per acre. It is what is the total assemblage, and what is the design load?
The 1,000-foot buffer, and who it actually burdens
For hyperscale projects, the draft provides that no principal data center building, generator yard, chiller yard, cooling equipment, substation or battery energy storage system may sit within 1,000 feet of the property line of an existing residential, hospital, daycare or K-12 educational use, or of a residential district.
Some separation rules apply to data centers of every size, including those inside existing buildings:
| Equipment | Minimum distance from residential, hospital, daycare or school use, or residential district |
|---|---|
| Ground-mounted chillers | 1,000 ft, from the equipment yard |
| Roof-mounted chillers | 500 ft, from the screen or parapet |
| Generators | 500 ft, from the equipment yard |
| Roof-mounted generators | Prohibited |
Two features deserve attention.
First, the buffer is measured to the neighbor’s property line, not their house. That makes it far more land-hungry than a dwelling setback. A 1,000-foot ring around a site boundary takes a great deal of ground out of play, which pushes hyperscale projects toward large, isolated M-2 tracts — or toward land that would have to be annexed and rezoned to get there.
Second, the protection is for existing uses, and it does not run in the other direction. For the chiller and generator distances, the draft says an approved data center is not affected by a residential, hospital or educational use established later within the restricted area. If you own land near a site and have plans to subdivide it for homes someday, an approved data center next door does not have to move. Those plans should be part of your thinking now, not after approval.
What every project would have to file
The draft requires administrative site plan approval for all new and expanded data centers and adds a stack of third-party studies to every application: a noise and vibration impact study with a week-long pre-development baseline; water use and water discharge reports; an energy consumption model; a public infrastructure and services impact report prepared in consultation with the Fire Department; an operations plan; and a decommissioning and site restoration plan with a cost estimate.
Applications must include proof of ownership or sufficient proprietary interest — the draft mentions a title report or, where the applicant is not the owner, evidence such as a purchase contract — and the name and signature of every current owner of property within the boundaries. If you have signed an option, expect to be asked to sign the application.
Agreements, and the end of NDAs with the City
Every primary-use data center would need a development agreement with the City covering road use, infrastructure, utility extensions and reimbursement. Every hyperscale project would also need a community benefit agreement, approved by the Council, with “measurable and enforceable community benefits.”
The draft also provides that the City may not enter into a non-disclosure agreement with a hyperscale applicant that restricts the City from disclosing information material to its review — projected water use, energy demand, noise, vibration, environmental and infrastructure impacts, and the community benefit agreement itself. Bona fide trade secrets can still be protected as the law allows. And an NDA signed before a project’s nature is disclosed must state that it is subject to this rule.
That rule binds the City, not private parties. A landowner’s own confidentiality clause in an option is a separate matter. But it does mean the project’s key numbers are headed for the public record. If your option forbids you from discussing the project, it is worth knowing whether it carves out public hearing testimony before you are asked to give any.
Water, power and the operating standards
- Water. Facilities must be designed for a Water Usage Effectiveness of no more than 0.2 L/kWh annually. Staff’s note puts industry averages at about 1.8–1.9. Evaporative chillers using potable water as the primary cooling source are prohibited. And no private well may serve a data center unless approved through a special use permit after a hydrogeologic evaluation shows it will not materially impair neighboring wells, the aquifer or City water resources. If you are on a well near a candidate site, that clause is written for you.
- Energy. A design Power Usage Effectiveness of no more than 1.2, plus a “grid impact reduction” requirement: on-site renewable generation sized to at least 25% of peak demand, or on-site storage able to supply at least 50% of peak demand for 15 minutes, or — if on-site is shown infeasible — off-site renewable procurement or local storage investment equal to peak demand. That is a direct link between data center siting and the solar and battery storage market we have been writing about.
- Noise. At the property line, no more than 57 dB(A) from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 47 dB(A) from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., with separate low-frequency limits and Type 1 instrumentation. Before a final certificate of occupancy, the facility must pass full sound and vibration testing under representative operating conditions.
- Vibration. Continuous monitoring at no more than 500-foot spacing along property lines within 1,000 feet of homes, schools, hospitals and daycares, with three years of data retained. The draft also adds a citywide vibration standard to the general performance standards for all uses developed after the ordinance — a provision with reach beyond data centers.
- Generators. Emergency use only — no baseload power, including while waiting for grid connection. Testing only 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, not on federal holidays, and no more than two at a time.
- Other. No PFAS-containing fire suppression foam, DarkSky lighting principles, water-quality treatment in stormwater systems, a two-story cap on the primary building, and annual public reporting by May 1 on energy, water, noise and vibration. Hyperscale facilities handling biometric data must comply with the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14/1 et seq., and certify compliance annually.
Violations would be municipal offenses carrying fines of $100 to $750 per violation per day, plus possible revocation of the special use permit or occupancy permit.
Decommissioning: the City’s protection is not yours
A data center that is non-operational for one continuous year (18 months if under active construction) must be decommissioned at the owner’s expense under its approved plan, with obsolete specialized equipment — generators, chillers, fuel systems, battery systems — removed.
But the draft says only that the City may require financial assurance, and staff’s own footnote says the form and amount still need to be defined before the code is finalized. Even if it ends up mandatory, a City bond protects the City. If you are leasing or optioning ground for one of these projects, your own removal deadline and your own security, naming you, belong in the lease. We made the same point about Normal’s battery storage ordinance, and it applies with more force here given the scale of equipment involved.
Why showing up on October 16 matters more than usual
Staff’s report is unusually direct on this point. It states that while the draft reflects forums, emails and online comments, testimony received at the formal public hearings is what the Planning Commission can legally use to make its recommendation — and that for the Council’s eventual decision to be defensible, it should rest on the hearing record. Staff calls public testimony “of paramount importance.”
Staff has also recommended that the Commission continue the October 16 hearing to November 16, and expects to revise the text in between. Several pieces are visibly unfinished: the financial assurance standard, how “third-party testing” will work, and the site design figure.
So the practical sequence is: testimony on October 16, a revised draft, more testimony on November 16, a Commission recommendation, then the City Council. The moratorium adopted May 26 is a six-month measure; how its timing lines up with the end of this process is worth watching on the Council’s agendas.
If you own land that could be affected — as a potential site, a neighbor, or a well owner — the time to put your concerns in the record is at the hearing, not after the ordinance is adopted.
If a developer has approached you
A data center option is not a solar lease with a different tenant. The load is larger, the equipment is heavier, the public process is longer, and under this draft the project you are part of may be much bigger than the acreage in your contract. Before you sign, know the total assemblage, the design load, which category it falls into, and what the 1,000-foot buffer does to the land you keep.
See our land use and zoning practice and, if the conversation involves solar or battery storage tied to the project, our wind, solar and battery lease practice. For the grid side of these projects, read how data centers are changing the grid and the lease terms that follow.
Source: City of Bloomington, Planning Commission staff report and draft text amendments, Case No. Z-07-26 (hearing date October 16, 2026), published on the City’s Data Center Information Hub. The draft is subject to change.