Chicago's Quantum Park Faces Data Center-Style Backlash — SkimNews
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- Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP) broke ground in September 2025 on a 128-acre former steel-mill site on Chicago's south side, with $1 billion in public and private funding already committed and $9 billion in long-term investment expected.
- PsiQuantum is the IQMP's most notable tenant, targeting the first US utility-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by as early as 2028, alongside facilities from Pasqal, Infleqtion, IBM, and Diraq; IBM says its center will add 750 full-time jobs.
- Southside Together has spent a year organizing against the project, and on 15 August at a "Community Over Quantum" event, Mayor Brandon Johnson faced jeers and chants of "Reverse the permits. Shut it down."
- Opponents have explicitly likened the IQMP to the xAI data center in Memphis, citing fears of rising utility bills, water scarcity, and noise — concerns the IQMP spokesperson says are misplaced because the park will be "filled with people, not machines."
- Olivier Ezratty of the Quantum Energy Initiative estimated future quantum computers could draw anywhere from 100 kilowatts to 200 megawatts — a range spanning a modestly large research facility to a figure exceeding a small city's energy use.
- Activists including Josh Sodicoff and Hanna He of Science for the People point to tenants' DARPA contracts and a lack of community outreach by the developer, Related Midwest, as fueling distrust beyond environmental concerns.
- The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency approved a new cleanup of the contaminated former steel-mill property at the end of 2025, and Johnson reaffirmed remediation efforts at the August event amid calls to redirect state funds to grocery stores and pharmacies instead.
Why it matters: If the IQMP becomes a national symbol of top-down tech infrastructure siting, the $9 billion bet on making Chicago America's quantum hub could be slowed by the same NIMBY coalition now derailing AI data centers — and quantum's deliberate branding as distinct from AI won't insulate it from shared water-and-grid anxieties.
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