If Franklin County residents thought last week’s contentious planning and zoning meeting would yield a months-long reprieve from data center proposals near where they live, they were mistaken.
Locals again turned out en masse yesterday, this time packing a special Board of Aldermen meeting the City of Pacific held to hear a proposal for a massive data center project on 500 acres off of Highway O, south of the Meramec River and the city’s limits. The meeting room was packed to the gills throughout the entire 3 hour and 20 minute meeting, with dozens of attendees spilling out of the back and hundreds more watching a livestream version.
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Pacific’s elected leaders appeared intent on avoiding a repeat of the at times unruly county Planning and Zoning commission meeting, during which commission members appeared overwhelmed by the size of the crowd and negative sentiment toward data centers.
“I just want to give a little reminder to all those that are here, this is a special Board of Alderman meeting, it is not a public hearing nor workshop,” Pacific Mayor Heather Filley warned attendees. “I understand emotions are high. We are all adults. We need to make sure we act like adults. If anyone gets out of line, you will be asked to leave. If you do not leave willingly, you will be escorted out by our police department.”
The crowd mostly heeded that warning, and no attendees were asked or forcibly removed. Tuesday’s meeting focused entirely on a presentation from Atlanta-based Beltline Energy that outlined the developer’s proposal to build up to 16 new buildings, representing up to a $16 billion total investment, on land they want Pacific to annex from an unincorporated part of Franklin County.
Notably, the acreage is owned by Linda and Bill McLaren, the latter of whom sits on the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Commission, though he said he chose not to attend last week’s meeting to avoid a conflict of interest. He contended this use of his land was a better deal than what residents heard last week, because at least Pacific could reap economic benefits from the development.
“If [that] moves forward, it’s as close to this community as my farm is, and you’ll get none of the benefits, you’ll get all the same problems,” he said. “You won’t get revenue, you’ll get no benefit, you’ll get all the problems that are associated with this and you will not get any revenue.”
Beltline Energy partner Ryan Sanders cast the meeting as the introduction of the firm’s proposal to the City of Pacific to get ahead of the zoning review process that’s likely to happen next month. An official planned use development application has been submitted to the city.
“Too often, data center developments don’t let enough light [in]. Light is the best intercept. We want to come here today, present our project and answer any questions that we can,” Sanders said. “We also want to receive the feedback from the community so that [when] we come to the public hearing in February, we’re able to modify and improve our plan.”
Sanders indicated his firm’s plans are malleable, repeatedly stressing that the developers are coming in “with a pencil” not “a permanent marker.” He also sought to distance this project from the one targeted for Diamond Farms, directly next to Shaw Nature Reserve, that drew the ire of locals last week.
Betline Energy is keen on building on this acreage because of its close proximity to Pacific’s water waste treatment plant on the other side of the Meramec from the proposed development site, Sanders said. His firm aims to use gray water from the plant as its cooling source, promising to eschew pumping groundwater from a well.
“This is what makes this such a good fit for our project,” Sanders said. “You have a wastewater facility, we have a facility that needs wastewater, and we feel like that creates a very unique alignment.”
The city’s current wastewater treatment plant would need about $15 million in upgrades to facilitate the plan, costs Sanders said the data center developer would cover. “This will unlock future growth for the city of Pacific,” he contended.
On top of that, Sanders said the city would see revenue in the form of franchise fees on both the sale of gray water to the development and its return to the city, as well as from similar fees for a percentage of the total electric sales within the city. Sanders estimated the project, which could draw as much as 1.2 Gigawatts if fully developed, would net the city between $12 and $17 million each year.
He rattled off the project’s other purported benefits: 1,000 annual construction jobs during the eight years of its construction and between 360 and 500 full-time jobs averaging six-figure wages once “fully operational.” Sanders also noted plans to develop the site with backup generators concentrated toward the center and behind the new buildings, so that its noise would stay below 50 decibels.
Sanders made a point of saying that the proposal was a “one-off” because of the planned use development review process in the City of Pacific versus what Franklin County officials considered (and ultimately punted on) last week, which involved adding data centers as a permitted use within the county.
“The [planned use development] obligates us to be a home run win for the city, or nothing at all,” Sanders said. “If our [project] is adopted, it is limited to just our project. So the City of Pacific can heavily regulate one data center designed in such a way that the impact of the neighbors is mitigated [and] economic benefit is really maximized.”
After Sanders’ presentation, he fielded questions from Pacific aldermen, who mostly drilled down on how the site would use and manage the wastewater it plans to employ for cooling as well as some questions about power usage.
Members of the public were less agreeable.
“This is snake oil salesmanship at its finest,” said the very first commenter, David Gullet, to whoops from the audience. “We don’t have the infrastructure to support this. We don’t want this here.”
From Gullet followed a deluge of criticism both about the proposal just presented as well as data centers in general. Locals railed against the idea of turning open rural land into an industrial development.
“Why do we have to go to these untouched, beautiful rural lands to build these facilities when there are dilapidated industrial zones all across this country,” posed Zach Greene.
Added Mark Baxa, a resident of the development directly south of the proposed data center next to Shaw Nature Reserve: “Many of the residents, not just in our subdivision, have already expressed that they built their homes and invested in a reasonable expectation that unincorporated land, living in the countryside, would remain just as that, and the farthest thing from their mind, mine included, was an industrial complex will be planted next door.”
Others raised familiar concerns, such as fears that the development would lower nearby property values, that any such facility would cause an irritating background hum, that it would affect nature and water resources, and that more developments would follow if Pacific were to approve this one. Some comments suggested that people were actively halting new investment into the area because of this proposal.
“I already know of several people who have pulled their home purchase contracts from Catawisa,” said Sharon LeFarth. “They have lost their deposit money, but they don’t care, because they don’t want to live anywhere near this. We’re losing good people right now.”
There was one lone voice testifying in favor of the development, Dick Browning, who drew scoffing from the audience when he said his company, Industrial Technologies Inc., distributes “equipment that goes into data centers.”
“It’s a huge improvement,” Browning said. “You get restaurants coming in, you get other businesses coming in, hotels coming in, everything else. It will increase our tax base.”
Overall, locals implored their elected representatives to respect their overwhelming sentiment against this kind of development. “This issue has brought conservatives and liberals together, Republicans and Democrats. Our entire town has united against this proposal,” said James Boyle.
Ward 3 Alderwoman Debbie Kelley concurred: “We represent the citizens and we must do what’s best for them.”
She took aim, as did other city representatives, at non-disclosure agreements that some in the city had signed in association with Beltline Energy’s proposal. Kelley also raised the point that the acreage in question isn’t even in the city yet, meaning any development would require annexation, “a big step in its own,” before the rezoning and consideration of a specific application.
Despite rendering no official decision on the development, some of the city’s Board of Aldermen appeared moved by the public testimony, with one alder even saying they’d “be OK with just saying ‘no’ to it.”
Ward 3 Alderman Scott Lesh wasn’t ready to go quite that far. “I always want to keep the door open for opportunities for Pacific,” he said. “I want them to sell us on the idea. I haven’t heard anything convincing today; it hasn’t changed the needle.”
At the end, there was one thing the Pacific Board of Aldermen did decide on: no longer doing future work with Cochran Engineering except for existing projects as required by contract, because the consultancy had also been hired by Beltline Energy. Members said that represented a conflict of interest for the city.
