Data Center Feasibility Study in Illinois

A thin record for a technology class

Illinois data center lending is small in both count and ticket. Across FY2017 to FY2026 the program booked 39 loans totalling $21.2 million, and the median of $200,000 is 0.97x of the class median nationwide, so a typical loan here is small. Half of the loans sit between $48,750 and $407,500. Illinois ranks 5 of 52 states for the class, data centers sit 21 of 39 among Illinois asset classes, and a location quotient of 1.15x shows slightly more weight than nationally. No Illinois figure here differs sharply from the class nationally or from Illinois lending across all classes.

Illinois lenders and counties

Seven-a loans number 34 and 504 loans number 5, and none is a franchise. Two lenders tie at 6 loans held. JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association holds $3.5 million of them, while Newtek Bank, National Association holds $685,000, so the same number of loans carries very different dollars. Cook County has 23 of the 39 loans, DuPage County has 8, Kane County has 4 and Lake County has 2.

Uneven volume, and two rates we cannot print

Annual counts are lumpy. FY2018 saw a single loan of $37,500, FY2021 saw no approvals, FY2019 and FY2022 each had 4 loans with $5.6 million and $6.2 million, and FY2025 had 8 loans and $3.4 million. No percentage for cancellations or for charge-offs sits in the Illinois cell, since Loan Analytics withholds any rate based on fewer than 30 loans. Nothing here should be read as evidence of clean performance.

What an Illinois data center study must test

The first question is what is being built and for whom. A small colocation or hosting facility lives or dies on power: the capacity and price of the utility feed, the redundancy available, and the cost of cooling. The study should document network connectivity, since carriers at the site decide whether tenants will come, and it should show signed or probable tenant commitments, because speculative space is the main risk. Equipment ages quickly, so the budget needs a replacement schedule and the loan term should not outlast the assets. Coverage must hold if the largest customer leaves. An appraiser will have few comparable sales for a special purpose building, so the lender leans on contracts and equity.

A coding limit

The industry code also holds data processing and hosting businesses, and colocation buildings cannot be pulled apart from hosting services, so the cell is broader than server rooms alone.