Top Metros – Tier 1: Investment Keeps Sailing into the Windy City

by Alexis Elmore
Site Selection March 2025

Buoyed by regional collaboration and a vision for the built environment that goes back to its signature city’s founding, Chicago-Naperville-Eglin returns to snag the top Tier 1 Top Metros rank for the 12th year in a row.

Investment Keeps Sailing into the Windy City

Company leaders don’t flock to Chicagoland just to bite into a Chicago-style hotdog. But like that piled-high, colorful taste treat, the region’s savory blend of economic development ingredients keeps them coming back for more.

Of the 664 total corporate facility project investments that Illinois received in 2024, the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro drew in 582. That represents virtually 100 more projects than the region attracted the year prior.

World Business Chicago President and CEO Phil Clement says the metro’s “magic elements” that drive the region’s economy begin with an extensive, highly skilled talent pool, supported by ample space and affordable, abundant and diverse utility offerings. These elements only work to bolster the region’s hub status, fortified by its central location in the country, three international airports, seven Class I freight railroads, ports access and positioning at the heart of the nation’s Interstate highway system.

The key to maintaining Site Selection’s Tier 1 Top Metros No. 1 rank for 12 years in a row? It came down to removing competition between surrounding counties so that everyone can work as a unified team to draw in fresh business to the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro region.

“We are finding that there is a certain momentum around Chicago right now,” says Clement. “I think the cultural vibrancy is a big part of that. We’re really fortunate right now — we have a great alignment between the state, county and city all the way down to our neighborhoods. Everybody’s aligned around economic growth and the importance of getting companies here and the importance of helping them.”

Project Data Reveals Data Center Projects
Stand-out project investments include a high number of data centers arriving in and around Chicago’s suburbs, attracted in part by companies taking advantage of the state’s Data Center Investment Program which offers a variety of tax credits for qualifying projects. Projects that went in motion include:

A $10 billion, 1,000-job investment from Compass Datacenters for five hyperscale data centers on the 200-acre former Sears HQ campus in Hoffman Estates;
T5 Data Centers’ plans for an up-to-$2.25 billion, 1.2 gigawats campus that will bring 20 data centers at 60 megawatts (MW) each across 160 acres in Grayslake

QTS’ $300 million expansion of its Chicago site to add a 366,000-sq.-ft., three-story data center and 80,000-sq.-ft. office and loading space;
CyrusOne’s new $350 million Aurora site which will bring data center buildings totaling 446,000 sq. ft., creating 20 new jobs;
A 315,000-sq.-ft., 36-MW data center site constructed by Iron Mountain Data Centers in Des Plaines.
“We’re very bullish on it. We’ve got areas that are perfect for data warehouses and we see a lot of them coming,” says Clement. “It goes back to connectivity for them, the expense of energy and the proximity to other computing facilities, like PsiQuantum. Then we have a number of companies like Clayco which are just leaders in the data warehousing space who are able to build them faster, better and cheaper than a lot of alternatives.”

HQ Central
The metro brought in over 30 new and expansion HQ investments in 2024, in addition to a plethora of companies looking to occupy office space throughout the region. According to Newmark’s recent Chicago Real Estate Market Report, Chicago and its suburbs both experienced their strongest leasing activity since 2019 and 2018, respectively, in the last quarter of 2024.

“Chicago attracts so many top-tier HQs due to our central location in the U.S., widespread and diverse talent pool, and access to major transportation hubs,” says American Institute of Architects Chicago Board of Directors President Jason Golub. “The city in general is far less expensive to operate in compared to East and West Coast urban hubs such as LA and NYC.”

The Windy City’s urban architecture landscape is second to none, drawing in year-round tourism to get a glimpse of history dating back to 1909, starting with the unique vision of American architect Daniel Burnham. The urban designer’s grid layout of the city’s major arterial streets remains as he designed them and still serves as a prerequisite for any future urban planning.

“Burnham’s plan focused on future growth, commerce and beautification,” says Golub. “There were six main principles that focused on improving the lakefront, placing highways outside of the city, new and improved passenger railways, acquisitions of parkways and a park system, the grid street layout to allow for movement to and from the central business district, and identified civic and intellectual centers.”

CBRE found that Chicago drew in the five of the Largest 100 Office Leases of 2024, putting the metro in fifth place nationally, one lease behind the six each in Silicon Valley and fellow Top Metro Dallas-Fort Worth. For businesses of any size looking to move operations back to the office, the Chicago metro seems to fill the need of modern office space built to entice a live-work-play lifestyle.

The Leaderboard Stays Intact
Behind the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro with 489 total projects is Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas, followed by Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, Texas, at No. 3 with 435 projects. The New York-Newark-Jersey City metro’s 250 projects come in at No. 4, keeping the top four metros the same as last year. Rounding out the top five is Boston-Cambridge-Newton, which climbed up three spots after securing 175 projects.

The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, metro moved up to No. 6, four projects behind Boston. Cincinnati, Ohio, entered the Top 10 running in 2024, with 126 projects landing the metro at No. 7. That beat out Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s 120 projects and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Georgia. With 104 projects each, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Arizona, and the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro tied at No. 10.

In February 2025, the Dallas Regional Chamber announced a record year for economic development growth, as 15 of its regional cities where able to draw in multiple projects and 31 cities around the metro scored at least one project. The chamber’s release noted increased investment from international countries, notably Canada, Mexico and Germany. The metro additionally proved to be a hotspot for 16 California-based companies who made the move to begin or expand operations.

Much like Chicago, the Dallas metro’s data center activity accounted for a vast amount of investment with up to $3 billion from Prime Data Centers in Fort Worth and Garland; Core Scientific’s $6.1 billion transformation of its bitcoin cryptocurrency operations into a new data center hub in Denton; a $300 million data center expansion in Red Oak from Compass Datacenters; and DataBank’s plans for a $256 million, over-425,000-sq.-ft. data center in Plano.

Other heavyweight project investments include Freyr Battery’s $340 million acquisition of Trina Solar’s 1.35-million-sq.-ft. solar module manufacturing facility in Wilmer; a $452 million, 1,500-job expansion at Taiwan-based Delta Electronics’ manufacturing and R&D site in Plano; and Amazon’s new $200 million, 500,000-sq.-ft. fulfillment center in Cleburne.

More than half of the 435 projects underway in the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metro are new, which has resulted in construction activity hitting an all-time high in the region. Between December 2023 and December 2024 the metro added the most construction jobs in the nation, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. Overall, the region saw a 6% increase, or 15,200 jobs, in the course of one year. On the other hand, New York City, Phoenix and Portland, Oregon, saw the largest decrease in new construction jobs.

Texas Metros On the Rise
Milken Institute’s 2025 Best Performing Cities report placed the Austin metro at the top of its Tier 1 rankings, including a No. 1 rank for both job and wage growth since 2018. The report notes high-tech industries have contributed highly to the region’s overall GDP growth.

In line with this data, the region has jumped to No. 1 among Site Selection’s Tier 1 metros by projects per capita. The region’s 171 projects pulled more weight per capita than the higher project totals in Chicago, Dallas and Houston, which follow Austin in the rankings.

The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro has become one of the nation’s fastest growing regions, sitting at a population of over 2.4 million. The region continues to burnish its reputation in the technology, health care and manufacturing sectors. Virginia-based EdgeConneX is one company now exploring the potential of a $1.4 billion data center campus outside of Austin in Bastrop, Texas. The Bastrop County Commissioners Court recently approved tax abatement for 112 acres in the city, which could soon be home to an estimated 2.8-million-sq.-ft. campus. Upon approval, construction on the project would be slated to begin in 2026.

Cincinnati completes the top five per capita leaders, while Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky, remains firm at No. 6. The Kansas City region enters the running at No. 7, followed by Columbus, Ohio, and newcomers Boston and Birmingham, Alabama, rounding out the Top 10.