DeKalb Times

DeKalb officials say that the selection of this city of 42,000 west of Chicago to be the site of a new data-gathering center for Facebook will revitalize a community hit hard by the loss of jobs and the 2008 recession.

“DeKalb was known as the barb city because more barbed wire was made here than anywhere else in the world,” DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas said in a Facebook video announcement of the tech giant's plans to build an $800 million, 900,000-square-foot facility just south of the Chicago West Business Center in his city.

DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith called the city a “little paradise” with a college (Northern Illinois University) out in the country.

DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas | Facebook

“With the loss of industrial jobs during the 1970s and ’80s, for a long time the city has been searching for a new identity and Facebook is going to give us that opportunity,” Smith said. “I check Facebook every day to see what folks are saying about their mayor.” 

Smith noted that the company's presence in DeKalb would raise property and sales taxes and result in population growth. 

Facebook Vice President of Data-Center Strategy Rachel Peterson said that DeKalb was chosen because of attributes including a robust infrastructure, renewable energy and an available pool of talent.

Nicklas pointed out in the video that the building of the facility will prove to be a boon for the construction trades, adding that the completed facility will transfer and store data for the social network “right in our backyard.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the project a 100% renewable-energy data center and said it would help fulfill a goal for the state of developing forward thinking, innovative and economically prosperous projects.

“I’m excited and proud,” Pritzker said.

The city officials predict that the project will reinvigorate a formerly depressed economy while still retaining the rural nature for which DeKalb is noted.

Areadevelopment.com described the project as a 907,000-square-foot data center on 505 acres that would include five buildings, two set to be finished by 2022. The completed project could generate 100 new data-center jobs, the report said.