AURORA, Ill. (WLS) — Aurora’s City Council held a special meeting Thursday. City leaders discussed a temporary moratorium on both new data centers and warehouses.

They were meant to be a boom for the town’s bank account, but they’ve become a drain on certain resources.

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After concerns about noise, traffic and environmental issues, a moratorium on data centers in the the city of Aurora was approved by the city council.

“We were told years ago they would be great ,” Aurora resident Lori Evans said.

It happened Thursday afternoon at a special meeting, which was sandwiched between the Aurora City Council’s finance committee meeting and the regularly scheduled city council meeting Thursday night.

The town’s alderpeople took a vote to enact a 180-day pause on additional data centers so the city can study and address their impacts.

The moratorium generally applies to new applications and expansion of existing facilities, but there are exemptions including already submitted applications for proposed projects and routine repairs that don’t increase capacity.

“We’ve seen an increase in the level of interest in data centers, so we need to have more streamline process that will help both developers and cities approved and not the applications as they come in,” Aurora Mayor John Laesch said.

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City leaders say aurora currently has four data centers with at least another five in the works.

A data center is a building where a vast array of servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and other critical it infrastructure is housed to process, store, manage, and disseminate large volumes of digital data for organizations.

Right now aurora city code classifies data centers as a type of warehouse and doesn’t address, noise, emissions, energy consumption or water use.

“Noise was the biggest concern and then there was vibration too, so the biggest concern specially after office hours and over the weekends when people want to be outside,” 10th Ward Ald. Shweta Baid said.

In addition to the noise and traffic concerns, some residents complain about increasing utility bills they say have been caused by the large amount of electricity they say a data center needs to operate.

City officials say during peak demand, a single data center building can use the equivalent of energy for 15,000 households.

Aurora does not have a city-owned electric utility, meaning it doesn’t generate, transmit, or sell electricity to its residents or businesses. They have to pay an electric supplier like ComEd.

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“It’s definitely not an anti-data laboratory at all in fact we’re just trying to get an understanding of what some of the potential impacts, because we’ve had concerns raise from the community like noise, but also environmental concerns,” Aurora director of sustainability Alison Lindburg said.

Other concerns are centered around storm water run off and increased water consumption as well as air pollution.

Any moratorium would result in a report recommending zoning charges while updating operational standards.

Attempts to reach owners of data centers buildings located in Aurora were not successful.

The moratorium would last until March 2026 and could be extended another 30 days.