Just about everything involving data centers has become highly charged—and that extends to reporters chasing down information about court judgments against their developers.
Yesterday, SLM asked David Daneshforooz about a $16 million judgment entered against him in May 2025 in federal court in Maryland. As the CEO and co-founder of TerraWatt, Daneshforooz is one of the developers behind the proposed $3 billion St. Louis project often referred to as “The Armory data center” even though the data center would be inside an old warehouse next to The Armory. (The Armory itself would later be developed into high-end office space.) Daneshforooz is also the CEO of Contour, which handled getting the project’s preliminary approvals from the city, making him something of its public face in St. Louis.
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But Daneshforooz did not appreciate questions about his business history, and particularly that judgment. “It’s private and privileged information, so what you just asked me is inaccurate,” he said. “And if anything’s printed otherwise, you’re going to have a problem. It’s that simple.”
Court records show that the $16 million judgment against Daneshforooz was related to two previous Delaware-based firms, Contour Propco 1735 S Mission and Contour Opco 1735 S Mission LLC. He was CEO of both.
In 2023, Maryland-based Forbright Bank sued both of them. According to that lawsuit, one LLC had defaulted on a $24 million loan used to purchase a 103-unit assisted living facility in California, a loan guaranteed by the other LLC. The lawsuit also alleged the facility was failing to make payroll and accumulating unpaid bills to vendors. Both LLCs filed for bankruptcy that same month.
The bank also sued Daneshforooz, alleging that he had personally guaranteed the loan. That suit wound its way through federal court in Maryland for two years before a judge issued a $16,183,831 judgment, plus interest, against Daneshforooz in May 2025.
To Daneshforooz, that is not relevant. “You don’t know all the facts,” he said. “If you guys want to take the risk of publicizing something that you don’t have the full facts on, that’s it. You want to publish what you want, go ahead. And if you publish something that’s incorrect or false, I will be suing your ass for libel and slander. Period. So go ahead and see if your general counsel wants to take that risk.”
Asked about the judge’s May 2025 order, which is publicly available, Daneshforooz said, “People are allowed to do whatever they please to do. But what the facts are around it are different, and that’s privileged information. Simple.”
“I’m one person at TerraWatt, and the experience on the TerraWatt side are my other co-founders of the company, specifically, who have built data centers for 15 years. That’s what needs to be focused on.” He then connected the reporter in a group text to TerraWatt’s co-founder and CFO David Lambiaso.
Before SLM talked to Lambiaso, we spoke with Daneshforooz’s partner in the Midtown project, THO Investments managing partner Rod Thomas. He said he wasn’t worried about the judgment. “He told me all about this when I first met him,” Thomas said of Daneshforooz. “Because I always vet people before I do business with them.”
Thomas added that Daneshforooz has an indemnity from Contour to cover his personal guarantee. “He doesn’t even have to pay it personally—he could, but he doesn’t have to,” said Thomas. “The company will pay it.”
Asked why Daneshforooz didn’t just explain that himself, Thomas said, “I’m sure he wouldn’t want any of this disclosed.”
Danseshforooz did tell SLM that his company Contour is getting ready to sell a 1.2 million-square-foot property in Buckeye, Arizona, that just last month was fully leased out by Amazon, suggesting that an avalanche of black ink should be headed for Contour’s books.
That might be true of TerraWatt, too.
Thomas says that Daneshforooz is on the cusp of closing an “extremely significant” deal with a New York hedge fund. “I can’t get into any more detail than that, but he is going to be one of the best capitalized—I mean, he was well capitalized before—but he’s going to be one of the best capitalized data center developers in the whole country,” says Thomas.
Daneshforooz’s co-founder at TerraWatt, Lambiaso, has 15 years experience developing data centers around the country, as well as seven years experience working on super compute programs for U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories.
Lambiaso points to up-and-running data centers in Minneapolis; Hillsboro, Oregon; and Plano, Texas that he had a hand in at a previous company as evidence that TerraWatt can get the Midtown project across the finish line. Those projects were each well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Asked if he’s ever before been a part of a $3 billion project, he says he has, though he notes that the dollar value attached to these data center developments is the value of the real estate and the value of the computers inside them: “When I was working with the National Labs, the computers alone were in the billions.”
The data project at The Armory site, like many proposed data centers throughout the county, has met public resistance. That’s even though it includes a Community Benefits Plan that many observers say is generous to the city. That plan includes a commitment not to seek tax incentives from the city, an agreement that the site’s water system be closed loop to reduce water usage, an agreement to employ at least 100 people by the facility’s third year in operation, and to kick in around $15 million to aid the Brickline Greenway, among other things. Boosters of the development have said it will generate more than $400 million in tax revenue for the city in its first decade.
Early versions of the project had plans for The Armory itself to be turned into a data center, a proposition that developers pivoted away from as many felt it was a poor use of a unique building that has played host to Grateful Dead concerts and housed the 138th Infantry of the Missouri National Guard. Daneshforooz himself agreed, telling SLM’s Eric Schmid that after seeing the space, he felt that it would be wasted on a data center. The new plan would instead see the data center built within the old Goodwill warehouse beside the Armory. “It’s beautiful, I fell in love with the building,” Daneshforooz told Schmid. Of The Armory, he added, “I was like, Man, a data center shouldn’t be in this building.”
In April, the city’s Board of Public Service gave final approval for a conditional use permit at the site, which allows the development to move forward. However, multiple citizen groups have since filed an appeal, which means the matter must now go before the city’s Board of Adjustment. A hearing for that particular project has yet to be scheduled.
No matter what questions people have about his background, Daneshforooz says the project is happening.
“We’ve got household capital names that are behemoth entities that have no problem with anything that are going to be the ones writing the check to develop this data center,” he said. “And that’s all that matters.”
He added, “The data center is getting built, with or without me. Period.”
