NORTH PEKIN – A former movie theater has been the talk of the town.
A month after Western Hospitality Partners withdrew its proposal to build a data center in Pekin, the Central Illinois Data Center Opposition Group urged Tazewell County residents to attend Monday’s North Pekin Village Board meeting and voice their opposition to a rumored project at the site of a former AMC-14 complex.
“We need residents to show up and let the Village of North Pekin know you do not want the former AMC Theater turned into a data center facility,” the organization wrote. “We ask for no zoning changes to the theater property without the new property owner completing an independent community impact study.”
Village residents and concerned citizens from surrounding communities filled North Pekin Village Hall and cheered Village President Stephen Flowers’ announcement that no data center proposal was under consideration.
“There is no plan to discuss any future data centers in any meetings,” he said. “We don’t have the area nor the infrastructure to accommodate such a facility.”
Representatives from the workers’ organization Workers Strike Back were on hand at Village Hall to circulate a petition opposing data center projects on a local and national level.
“We don’t want to allow any openings for big tech corporations to come in and set up data center that the majority of the American public don’t want,” said Workers Strike Back organizer Justin Smeltzer.
Tazewell County property records show that Indiana-based North 52 LLC purchased the property at 1124 Edgewater Drive last December for $575,000. North 52 principal Jeffery Agan indicated that he was thinking of converting the 44,556 square foot building into warehouse spaces and reselling them.
“It’s very tough to generate a second-generation user on a theater,” he said. “So, you have to look for alternative uses. I think the most conceivable is to redo the floors, change the mechanical systems, and use it for small warehousing.”
Agan added that the warehouse units he has in mind would be 5,000 to 7,000 square feet each.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: What’s next for former AMC Theatre? Not a data center, North Pekin board says
Reporting by Mike Kramer, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mike Kramer, Peoria Journal Star | USA TODAY Network
