DeKalb County, Illinois

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Key takeaways

Meta announced an $800 million DeKalb data center in June 2020. Northern Illinois University, the city's largest employer with about 20,000 students, is Illinois's third-largest campus and shares the same ComEd substation rotation that now backs the Meta build.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: DeKalb, Illinois)
DeKalb already hosts distribution warehouses for Target, 3M, Nestle, and Ferrara Candy Company. The Meta campus on the south side of town joins that industrial cluster instead of starting greenfield.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: DeKalb, Illinois)
DeKalb County has 100,512 residents on a median household income of $69,022. Home prices rose 20.5% over three years against a $231,900 median home value, the sharpest move in this batch.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003, B19013, B25077 + data/cache/realestate_yoy.csv (FIPS 17037)
ComEd's residential rate rose only 3.1% over three years and property tax assessments rose 5.3% over the same window, both the most restrained in this batch outside Dalton. Illinois's nuclear-heavy generation mix is the structural reason the rate is so flat.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Commonwealth Edison Co, IL) + data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 17037)

Unemployment in DeKalb County is 7.1%, the highest in this batch and more than twice the Dallas Iowa or Ada Idaho rate. The Meta campus arrives in a labor market with the most slack, which is the structural reason home-price acceleration without wage acceleration is plausible.Source: Census ACS 2023 B23025_002E, B23025_005E (DeKalb County, IL)
14.0% of DeKalb residents are Hispanic of any race and 6.4% are foreign-born, well above the rural-Illinois baseline. The Northern Illinois University-anchored labor pool already pulls a more diverse base than the surrounding farm counties.Source: Census ACS 2023 B03003_001E, B03003_003E, B05002_001E, B05002_013E (DeKalb County, IL)
Only 60.9% of DeKalb housing units are owner-occupied, the second-lowest owner share in this batch after Fulton. The 39.1% renter base is partly student housing for NIU's 20,000 students, the cohort least insulated from any ComEd rate move that follows the Meta build.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25003_001E, B25003_002E (DeKalb County, IL)
15.9% of DeKalb residents live in poverty and median gross rent is $1,041. The combined poverty-and-rent profile is closer to a Rust Belt mid-size city than to the I-90 logistics corridor DeKalb appears in on a map.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001_001E, B17001_002E, B25064_001E (DeKalb County, IL)