The historic Schulze Bakery structure may soon host a new Chicago data center. The structure, located in the city's Washington Park neighborhood near the University of Chicago, was recently put on a list of most endangered historic places, but is now included in plans to be protected and renovated. An anonymous developer has committed $100 million to turn two-thirds of a 150,000 square foot building into a data center, and open up the rest of it for commercial use.
A willing data center operator, yet to be named, has already been found for the building, but they are still looking for a tenant. Any organization interested in hosting data center in prime downtown Chicago space may soon find exactly the computing power they've been looking for.
Ghian Foreman of 55th and State Redevelopment is looking for commercial enterprises to work within the lower part of the building so that people will be able to experience the historic space.
"The bad thing about a data center is no people, it's not going to activate the space," Foreman said. "We're going to have a building full of computers, but we also need a building full of people."
The lack of available Chicago real estate space may make this data center attractive to a variety of tech companies in the area.
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