The Barrington Hills Observer

Source: Brennan Investment Group December 15, 2025 presentation to the Barrington Hills Board of Trustees

Last month during the February 23rd Board of Trustees meeting, Trustees and attendees heard public comments from:

• Carson Rice
• Karen Trzaska
• Julie Becker
• Austin Becker, and
• Aaron Becker

This marked the second Board meeting since the now infamous, “110 Acre AI data center campus pitched to Village Board,” was made public and residents were afforded an opportunity to share their thoughts. To follow are the Public Comments of one resident who spoke after having benefit of the review of records received from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to the Data Center pitch:

“I’m Karen Traska… It’s kind of good that I’m following him because I might have a few of your answers.

You know, before I came here, I was pretty mad. And now I’m standing in front of you guys and I’m sad. Like, I’m really sad.

Last time I was standing up here, we were talking about this data center that came out of nowhere, right? It just sort of popped up. They just showed up like 5 minutes before the meeting. It wasn’t on the agenda because, you know, they just kind of showed up, and, the last time I was here, I was also waiting for my FOIA request, and I got my FOIA request.

So turns out, October 8th, our Village Administrator, Anna Paul, put a meeting in the calendar with the Brennan Investment Group and what seems to be their attorneys for the data center. October 21st, you guys had the meeting with Brennan.

…November 10th, Brennan followed up with Anna to see what the feedback was. A week later, November 17th, Board of Trustee meeting. It wasn’t on the agenda. It wasn’t brought up.

December 15th, 2 months after the meeting, Board of Trustee meeting again. It wasn’t on the agenda, but now, as we all know, a 25-minute presentation discussion, but apparently not even some of the trustees knew about it until that moment. Community didn’t know about it. We couldn’t show up to listen or engage. It wasn’t until mid-January that word really gets out to the community.

All hell breaks loose, right? We’re all here at the meeting, January 26th. And President Cecola, Brian, you sat here and repeatedly stated that no one, no one on this Board wanted a data center, right? No one wanted it. And nobody raised their hand, contradicted him. No one said, well, actually, no, I did.

Well, Tuesday, December 16th, the day after the presentation with Brennan, Trustee Strauss, who’s not here unfortunately, to Wes Levy, the Village Treasurer, and Anna Paul, the Village Administrator.

Wes, nicely done last night. Can you ask Anna to share the information we received last night from Brennan Investment Group about a possible data center development?

Levy responds, hi, Trustee Strauss. Anna brought this one to my attention a couple weeks ago. I am sure there will be concessions and property tax forgiveness as part of a deal to bring them in, but if they do come, it will be significant revenue.

Then Strauss emails Cecola,

Brian, my opinion is we need to take this very seriously. Opportunities like this do not surface often. We would need to make certain we can lock up the project and the necessary requirements short-term and long-term, but based on the location, I believe the developer is for sure going to be very open to making concessions.

Same time, Trustee Hoffman was sending an article citing energy usage concerns. Thank you.

And Strauss replied with an article of his own regarding some small town in Quincy, Washington, and how they love the data center. He shared,

I have done a lot of research the last 2 days, and these centers are legit. Below is a small community and the impact that I sent to Brian yesterday. And it was all these statistics. To which then Trustee Clarke responded, Thanks. I agree with Trustee Strauss.

That’s just what was sent to me. There were 2 emails with a staff member and the attorney not sent to me, apparently due to some attorney-client privilege, which I don’t understand because I thought the village was the client, like the residents were the client, but maybe not. I will be asking about that later.

Allegedly, other conversations were had off record with more than just Strauss and Clarke being in favor of the data center. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.

I do want to thank Trustees Ekstrom and Hoffman, whether in emails that I received or in public meetings in front of all of us, or both, for standing up for our Village and its unique character, as well as for calling for transparency, not just in the community but within your own Board. I hope in the future we can go back to the transparency that we had with our previous Village President.

Again, this whole thing makes me really sad. So that’s all I have to say. Thank you.”

A transcript of comments from the February 23rd Board meeting can be found here, and the audio recordings of the entire meeting can be found here.

The Village posted the following after the February 2nd Special Plan Commission meeting was cancelled:

“Based on initial feedback, the developer for a possible data center in the Village of Barrington Hills has decided not to go forward with a presentation at the informational Plan Commission meeting.

At this time, the Village considers this matter closed and does not anticipate any further discussion.”

Few if any believe the matter to be closed.

As an aside, the Plan Commission last met on October 2nd, 2025, just six (6) days prior to the Brennan meeting being scheduled by the Village Administrator, per FOIA documents obtained. See Draft Minutes of the October 2, 2025, Meeting.

We thought the timing to be interesting. We also find it interesting that the FOIA records show no evidence of contact between the Village and Brennan Investment Group in advance of October 8th, 2025, when the Village scheduled the October 21st, 2025, meeting. Nothing. No emails with introductory materials, no emails confirming the meeting.

Editorial note: In “Part 1” of our series we neglected to include the “Data Center Overview” posted by the Village on January 16th, 2026. This has since been corrected.

Related: “Do you trust our Board of Trustees? We don’t. But you decide for yourself once we have finished. (Part 2),” “Do you trust our Board of Trustees? We don’t. But you decide for yourself once we have finished. (Part 1),” “7 things to know about Illinois data centers,” “Data Center group concerned over pause,” “110 Acre AI data center campus pitched to Village Board”