Chicago should impose a temporary moratorium on new or expanded data centers until permanent regulations are established to mitigate their impact on the power grid, the water supply and the environment, Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday in a move that an influential alderperson called a “political stunt.”
Johnson also signed an executive order establishing regulatory guardrails aimed at strengthening the city’s approach toward data center development.
Two years ago, the City Council approved an ordinance championed by Zoning Committee Chair Gilbert Villegas (36th) that created a working group on data centers with input from affected city departments.
Preliminary recommendations on how to regulate the controversial industry have been released and were the focus of a recent hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection.
With those steps already taken, Villegas said that Johnson’s executive order is unnecessary. He said the mayor should merely introduce an ordinance that codifies the working group’s recommendations.
“This is just another political stunt by the mayor to say that he did something, given the fact that data centers right now are unpopular,” Villegas said Tuesday. “This is like the 100th executive order by this administration, instead of going through the regular ordinance process.”
Data centers have drawn fire in Chicago and across the country because of their potential to negatively affect the environment, drain water supplies and drive up energy costs. Johnson cited all of those potential negatives as he signed the executive order at Northerly Island, the nature park that once housed the lakefront airport known as Meigs Field.
Chicago is a “tech hub that embraces innovation, but never at the expense” of health, safety or the “natural environment,” the mayor said.
“Chicagoans have been absolutely clear. They do not want data centers expanding across our city without strong protection for their communities, for their utility bills, for their air, water and their quality of life. … We are answering their demands and centering our communities’ concerns and solutions in our decision making,” Johnson said.
“Before AI accelerates any faster, the city is taking steps now to protect Chicagoans from the impacts of data center development, while we undertake the comprehensive work that is necessary to establish permanent protections,” he said.
Chicago is the seventh-largest market for data centers in the U.S., according to 2026 research by commercial real estate firm Avison Young. The city has been attractive, in part, because of its pro-business policies, including the 2024 ordinance that incentivized new data centers within city limits. But experts say new data centers in the region have increasingly been pushed to the south and west suburbs, where there’s more land for the large industrial buildings.
Nevertheless, pushback on data centers is growing, especially in suburbs like Grayslake and Cicero. Cicero trustees in July approved resolutions opposing a pair of rumored data centers, including one at the historic Hawthorne Race Course in neighboring Stickney.
The resolution opposing a data center at the former horse-racing track states that town officials don’t want any projects built anywhere near Cicero, home to more than 80,000 people.
There are 39 data centers within city limits, according to the city. The former CBOE headquarters Downtown is still on track to be converted into a data center — and last week, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks’ permit review committee approved plans to convert the lower floors of 300 W. Adams St. into a data center.
ComEd CEO Gil Quiniones told the Chicago Sun-Times in June there are around 100 proposed data center projects in Northern Illinois, though it’s unlikely that all will go forward. The centers have requested a combined 33 gigawatts of power from the utility.
“I think the sentiment [around data centers] has changed, and I believe that everyone is looking for — and we support it — more responsible development of data centers,” Quiniones said in the June interview.
The mayor was asked why he felt it necessary to issue yet another in a string of executive orders.
“We obviously have strong partnerships with City Council. What was important was to ensure that some of the vagueness around how environmental matters are addressed — that we clear that up,” Johnson said. “Now there’s absolute direction for departments to be able to do their part. That’s the executive authority that I do have in this situation.”
Villegas said golf courses across the country gobble up 35 times the amount of water that data centers use and concerns about energy costs could have been addressed years ago if Johnson had negotiated a new franchise agreement with ComEd.
“Data centers create a ton of property tax revenue that the city desperately needs and create hundreds of thousands of union jobs. But there is a balance here,” Villegas said.