For two weeks now, the city’s executive director of planning and urban design Don Roe has remained silent regarding which “elected official” allegedly reached out to him with concerns during an August 12 St. Louis Planning Commission meeting, urging that members reconsider rejecting measures that would loosen data center regulations.
Near the end of that nearly five-hour meeting, Roe suggested the commission reconsider its rejection of aldermanic changes to the city’s draft regulations, changes that were designed to help data center developers. He said he had heard concerns. “I heard it from our attorney,” he said. “I heard it from an elected official.” Specifically, he raised the possibility of the commission voting on a third option: suggestions by staff that would modify, instead of outright reject, the aldermanic changes.
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That set off a two-week guessing game and Sunshine law requests seeking to learn to which “elected official” had reached out.
The answer seems to be: none.
On Friday, Roe broke his silence, saying in a statement, “I did not have any direct communications regarding the vote with any elected official who was not present in the room.”
He added, “I apologize for the confusing nature of those discussions.”
The unusual explanation led to some head scratching.
“Maybe he just got nervous,” offered Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, when he was told of Roe’s statement.
One person familiar with the situation suspects Roe got “frazzled.”
Roe’s statement comes on a day that’s seen several developments regarding the regulation of data centers in the city, including the proposed framework for how data centers will be regulated in the city going forward. (The data center proposed for near the Armory would be grandfathered in.)
The framework has seen a lot of back and forth. Data center boosters decried the initial regulations that came from the Planning Commission, calling them tantamount to a ban. Those regulations then went to the aldermen, who passed amendments loosening them significantly. Among those amendments were a way for data center projects to apply for waivers on renewable energy requirements if there was not adequate renewable energy to be purchased. Under the amendment offered by Alderman Tom Oldenburg, those waivers would have to be renewed every five years. Similarly, an amendment sponsored by Alderwoman Jami Cox Antwi would have given projects a pathway around a cap on data centers not occupying more than 30 percent of a building.
Those regulations then went back before the Planning Commission, which voted to reject them before Roe’s purported communication from an “elected official” threw the meeting in disarray. Commissioners recessed for eight days and only last week reconvened and adjourned—their rejections having been made official.
So the proposed regulations were back before aldermen on Friday. In the meantime, though, alders had met and hashed out compromises.
Oldenburg and Schweitzer agreed on tweaks to Oldenburg’s renewable energy waivers. Data center projects will be able to apply for them, but they will have to be renewed every two years rather than every five years. The cap on data center density, which Schweitzer wanted at 30 percent of any building but Cox Antwi wanted to provide developers with a way around entirely, is now at 50 percent.
The regulations voted on by aldermen Friday now go back to the Planning Commission, likely for the last time. Even if the commission votes to reject them, they enjoy sufficient backing from aldermen to override the commission.
Oldenburg said that today’s effort at the Board of Aldermen “embodies the spirit of compromise.”
“I do think we improved the bill today and I hope I can make that case to the Planning Commission,” said Schweitzer.
Mayor Cara Spencer likes what she sees. “This bill is the result of a year-long intensive effort to tackle this complex and contentious topic head-on. By working together—City staff, aldermanic partners, the community, industry experts, sustainability advocates, and labor stakeholders—we have crafted a robust framework that sets a standard for other jurisdictions to follow,” she said in a statement. “We can attract responsible investment while simultaneously upholding our high standards for environmental sustainability and neighborhood protection.”
Elected officials in the city have put an virtually incalculable number of hours into the regulations. There is, of course, concerns of an “AI bubble” and an uncertainty regarding how many of these data centers the American tech industry will actually need.
Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, who more than anyone other than perhaps Schweitzer has been in the nitty gritty of data center regulations, says that all the unknowns do give her pause.
“It’s such a new industry, who can really know where it’ll be in five or ten years, and I think it’s possible that you just now have a bunch of buildings with no suitable use but to turn them into data centers,” she says. “So that’s definitely a concern of mine.”
