With golden shovels in hand, Prime has officially launched the construction phase of its Chicago data center campus while taking another giant leap forward on its rapid growth trajectory.

Prime Data Centers officially broke ground on its $1B Chicago-based data center, Prime ORD, located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The facility will deliver more than 750,000 square feet, 175 megawatts of capacity at full build-out, and will be the largest data center campus in Greater Chicago.

Meet Prime ORD-01: Inside a $1B Chicago Data Center Campus 

ORD-01, the first of the three planned data centers on Prime’s Chicago data center campus, will be marketed to major cloud providers, global Internet businesses, colocation companies, and the Fortune 500 enterprise. The data center is available as a single-tenant, hyperscale data center.

“The partnership between Elk Grove and the data center industry has led to unprecedented growth and positive economic impact,” said Nicholas Laag, Chief Executive Officer of Prime Data Centers. “Looking ahead, we will continue to partner with forward-thinking governments, executing on an aggressive, multinational expansion plan that will establish Prime as the data center foundation for the global proliferation of content creation and cloud solutions.”

A Prime Celebration

Watch the video below for a recap of the official groundbreaking ceremony held on November 15th in Elk Grove Village. Hear more from Prime and key project partners on this innovative project.

The Prime team was joined by Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, as well as executives from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and project partners ComEd, Clune Construction Company, and Gensler, many of who spoke about the opportunities the campus will provide the surrounding communities.

“I couldn’t be happier to welcome our new neighbors at Prime Data Centers to Illinois as they break ground on their Chicago data center campus,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “We aren’t just the heart of the Midwest—we are a national leader in innovation and business growth, in large part thanks to companies like Prime.”

This announcement follows the news that Prime had recently broken ground on its second Silicon Valley location at 2175 Martin Ave in Santa Clara. The executive team has also seen a growth spurt this fall with the additions of Kristen Bejarano as the Vice President of Construction, Steve Benson as the Vice President of Critical Operations, and Renee Dowis as the Vice President of Procurement.

To learn more, read the full announcement here.