More than three months after receiving it, the developer behind the proposed data center at the Armory in Midtown St. Louis has yet to answer a 44-question survey about the project.
Developer Rod Thomas wants to build a data center in the parking lot of the Armory, a now-shuttered building in Midtown once lauded as the city’s biggest bar. The Green Street project closed in 2024 due to financing issues.
THO Investments, managed by Thomas, and Simms Building Group sought a conditional use permit for the project, but the hearing was postponed in September and has yet to be rescheduled.
In September, Thomas said work on the city’s questions was underway. But in an email this week, Zoning Administrator Mary Hart Burton said that no additional information about the proposal or answers to the survey questions had been received.
In a statement, Thomas said additional feedback is being gathered and incorporated into the project. He said he hopes to submit answers to the city’s questions in the weeks ahead.
The questions were part of new requirements put into place by Mayor Cara Spencer’s administration and the Board of Aldermen in September of last year, after a wave of pushback against the estimated $1.5 billion project and any new data center proposals in the city.
Those rules also require developers of data centers to hold public hearings, obtain a conditional use permit and prove the project won’t threaten public welfare and safety — all before beginning construction.
Burton added that the development team may be in the process of adjusting the project's approach.
Outlines of the project call the project an “economic development machine” that could act as a catalyst for technological growth in the city.
Lauren Fila, an organizer with the Eco-Socialist Green Party of Eastern Missouri, said the lack of transparency on the project has been frustrating. The group started a petition in response to the Armory proposal that garnered more than 13,000 signatures. It called for a yearlong moratorium on any data center proposal in St. Louis.
"The fact that four or so months later they still can't answer those questions means that we don't know enough about these types of facilities to be approving them,” Filla said.
The survey includes questions about how much power will be needed to operate the facility, how many jobs it will create and how it might impact the environment.
Filla said members of the group felt the town halls held by Steadfast City offered few answers, and the questions the consulting group said it would address in time have gone unanswered. She called some of the information provided at the town halls misleading.
A coalition of community and environmental groups held a rival town hall in October, attended by nearly 200 people. Filla believes that turnout sent a message to developers and city officials.
"We don't want any AI data centers in St. Louis,” Filla said. “We don't want them in St. Louis. We don't want them in Missouri."
Meanwhile, new data center proposals spring up throughout the region — and with them, more opposition from community members and environmental groups. Proposed data centers in Festus, Foristell, Montgomery City and elsewhere have emerged in the interim as Gov. Mike Kehoe and other officials tout the developments as a key economic driver for the state.
Filla said St. Louisans and Missourians are pushing back.
“There is such massive popular resistance to these AI data centers — we saw that in St. Louis, we saw that in Festus, we saw that in Foristell,” she said. “It's frustrating to see developers and city officials still try to find a way to let these go through when the public just does not want these.”
