Residents angry over a proposed data center filled a St. Charles open house Thursday, wearing red shirts to signal they are against the 440-acre project.
The St. Charles City Council is considering zoning approvals for the center and plan to vote on it on Tuesday.
The residents said they’re worried the data center will contaminate their water, spike their energy prices and decrease property values.
The center would be built about 600 feet from Chad Coleman’s house, on a site off Highway 370 and Hayford Road.
“I don't see any positive in any of this, actually,” Coleman said. “There is plenty of land in St. Charles County that is industrial, that isn't by private citizens, that they could have built on.”
The company trying to build the data center is secret. Its lawyer, Korb Maxwell, would only say that it’s a Fortune 100 company and that it will be a large data center. Maxwell said the project will benefit the region.
“It's the jobs, it's the tax revenues, it's the construction jobs that are coming,” Maxwell said. “It's the look towards the new economy that is going to happen, whether folks want it or not. You know, America is changing, and the economy is digitizing further and further. It's all those benefits that we're bringing into the greater St. Louis economy.”
The project is being built by CRG Cumulus, a registered agent of Clayco, a construction company that has built data centers, including three in St. Charles for Centene, BJC Healthcare and CitiMortgage.
Maxwell said these types of projects are typically confidential at this stage.
“It's really done because of the competitive landscape that is the data center world right now,” Maxwell said. “We're in one of the most hypercompetitive landscapes that America has ever seen.”
That secretive nature has caused frustration among residents. Tim Kline is a third-generation farmer whose farm butts up against the proposed data center site. He grows soybeans and corn, and the farm has been in his family since the 1930s.
“I heard now that a lot of our elected officials have signed an NDA. I'm just a farmer, country boy. I think that’s a nondisclosure agreement, I think it's called,” Kline said. “How in the world can you work for the citizens of St. Charles and not be able to discuss this project with them before you take a vote on it?”
State Rep. Colin Wellenkamp represents part of St. Charles and is part of the Missouri Future Caucus, which formed to craft bills on issues like artificial intelligence. The Republican said before deciding his stance on the data center, he needs to know more about it.
“Not all data centers are built equally,” Wellenkamp said. “You have highly efficient data centers that use less resources, and you have more wasteful data centers. What kind of data center is this one going to be? I need to know.”
Charles Cross lives nearby and showed up with a sign that said: “No data center. Save our water.” He’s also frustrated with the secrecy around the project.
“These money people, they don't care about me,” Cross said. “They don't care about the little people. The billionaires, and even multibillionaires, they will destroy the middle class.”
The project will generate millions of dollars in taxes and both construction and longer-term jobs, said Maggie Kost, chief business attraction officer for Greater St. Louis Inc.
“Data centers are a critical part of our economic development strategy,” Kost said. “We know that the jobs of the future are going to be dependent on this type of infrastructure that's out there.”
