Bob Clark is feeling optimistic. The Clayco founder, St. Louis County resident, and current face of American data center construction—he was on the cover of Forbes last month, making his pitch—is a lifelong Democrat, and was thrilled to see voters deliver a rebuke to the White House. “I’ve been very nervous about democracy in general,” he says, “and I think this is a great direction for the country.” He doesn’t mention President Donald Trump by name; he doesn’t have to.
The election results, of course, also offered plenty of reasons for a data center developer to be nervous. Democrats ran up huge victories in places like Texas while actively campaigning against data centers, and voters across the country rejected them in the vast majority of local referendums, according to PBS News. Tech stocks plummeted last week over fears that the new Democratic majority could usher in more regulation and slow the nation’s data center buildout (though many saw a sharp rebound on Monday).
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But Clark believes people are misinterpreting how the Blue Wave could affect the industry. “Everybody is like, ‘Boy, the Democrats are really going to stop this data center movement,’” he says. “And I think I think that’s absolutely the opposite of what’s going to happen.”
If Democrats had merely eked out a victory, Clark posits, they might need to come after data centers. Instead, they won both the House and the Senate by big margins, and many races by surprisingly big percentages. That, he suggests, gives them good incentive to keep the economy humming—which, to him, means more data centers. Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa may have campaigned on blocking permits for data centers if they weren’t a good deal for the state, but he argues she’s going to be fine with ones that are: “Nobody wants to shut the economy down in Texas.”
Even Clark’s critics might concede he has a point: The stock market is so tied up in AI investment, some observers believe even a single company’s collapse could pull down much more than the tech industry. Clark doesn’t think Democrats want to risk that, nor should they—not just for investors, but as a point of national security.
“I think Democrats need to have a strong economy, and I think any kind of rhetoric [otherwise] is going to go by the wayside,” he says. “With their huge majorities now, I think they can do what’s in the best interest of the American people. And that is not slowing down the building of infrastructure that is going to be critical to our nation’s competitiveness.”
He concedes that mistakes were made in the last few years’ construction push, though he won’t get more specific as to who made the mistakes and where. In any event, the various missteps took what had been a noncontroversial type of development and made it radioactive in many communities. (Clayco, he notes, built data centers for years before the recent AI-fueled blitz, with little controversy). He blames some “real egregious behavior by some of the data center developers” for fueling mistrust, as well as the secrecy driven by NDAs in many projects; while they’re standard in his industry, he says, it’s clear that these proposals need to be handled differently.
“I think there just has to be really transparent, open discussion,” he says. “No NDAs.” He admits that hasn’t been the standard (in Festus, for example, Clayco’s subsidiary CRG secretly met with city officials for months before residents learned of the potential for a data center there, despite promises of transparency once the project became more public). He argues the new Democratic majority can hold data centers and tech companies accountable without strangling the pipeline of new projects. “I think the data center industry is all for that.”
He adds, “Even in Texas, nobody is talking moratoriums. Nobody is talking about shutting things down. Listen, I think the American people want the economy to be strong.”
That’s not to say individual communities are excited to welcome the proposals. The polling is clear; people don’t want data centers in their communities, much less next door.
One of the first big data centers proposed for the St. Louis region was Project Cumulus, a $1 billion proposal made last year for St. Charles. An arm of Clayco was eventually revealed as the developer and the end user as Google. The project was ultimately withdrawn in the face of widespread anger from residents, and St. Charles County enacted one of the first comprehensive data center bans in the U.S.
“I think in St. Charles we were kind of caught off guard, honestly,” Clark says, blaming a neighbor to the site who bankrolled a campaign against it. “I think that’s a tragedy for St. Charles, given their overall financial situation.”
He says he also worries about St. Louis. The city may have said yes to a data center adjacent to The Armory, but a new license fee pitched by Aldermanic President Megan Green for future projects has him concerned. “I think the city of St. Louis is heading down a dark path,” he says. “You know, I’ve always called St. Louis the city of lost opportunities, and it looks like that trend is going to continue.”
Yet Clark insists he’s optimistic overall. He’s convinced of the power of generative artificial intelligence to help mankind, and he believes that his native Missouri will benefit as the industry grows. He cites the massive data centers being built in Montgomery County, Warren, and Festus. He’s also wildly excited about the giant project being pitched for the former steel mill in Alton.
And he rejects the notion that all this construction means just short-term gains. Critics say companies like Clayco may benefit while data centers are built, with hundreds of construction jobs, but note there’s generally a much smaller workforce once the project opens. Clark says that’s an oversimplification.
For one thing, he says, building enough data centers to satisfy demand will take more than a decade. For another, he says, a data center is never really finished. “They’re constantly being renovated,” he says. He cites the example of a data center Clayco built years ago that’s now being retrofitted for a new type of chip. “I think we’re going to see constant modification [and] constant innovation, and I don’t think it’s going to slow down anytime soon.”
Will the politicians now coming into power be receptive to that pitch? That’s the trillion-dollar question facing not just Clayco, but America. And Clark is betting that America’s newly elected leaders will come around on data centers—just like he saw happen in Festus. That city council signed off on Clayco’s plans to build a data center six times the scale of the one St. Charles County rejected.
“We didn’t win everybody over in Festus by any stretch of the imagination,” Clark acknowledges. “But what we did is win the council vote by having really great, rational conversations.”
Just weeks later, of course, residents in the Jefferson County municipality voted out every incumbent member of the city council up for reelection, even one who opposed the project. But the data center is moving forward.
And as Festus goes, perhaps, so goes the nation.
