By Erin Socha, University of Kansas student
LAWRENCE — A protest petition and lawsuit have put the brakes on a proposed $12 billion data center after zoning was initially approved by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, in May.
The developer of the hyperscale facility, Red Wolf DCD Properties, submitted plans for six buildings totaling 1.8 million square feet on the north and south sides of Parallel Parkway in western Wyandotte County. A “hyperscale” data center is 10,000 or more square feet and houses at least 5,000 computer servers. The project would be the largest development in Wyandotte County’s history.
Proponents of the plan say it will bring badly needed revenue to the county. However, residents and an environmental group have voiced concerns about government transparency, location and environmental costs associated with the facility, whose end user remains unknown.
“We’re trying to figure out, if we’re going to welcome data centers to Kansas, how we can make sure that we’re not doing any harm to the communities, to the ecosystems and the environment,” said Zack Pistora, director of the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club.
Protest petitions were filed for each of the north and south developments, triggering the requirement of supermajority zoning approval from the 11-member planning and zoning commission. On July 31, a rezoning amendment for the north side application failed to meet that threshold after a 7-3 vote. The south side of the proposal did not require supermajority approval after eight signatories to the petition removed their signatures.
In documents filed in Wyandotte County District Court, the plaintiffs, Neal Palmer and Haskell Farms LLC, allege the Unified Government should not have approved rezoning from residential to commercial because of “numerous errors and insufficiencies” in the developer’s applications, which they say “failed to adhere to the Unified Government’s municipal code.” The lawsuit claims the commission rushed review processes “without sufficient study of short and long-term impacts.”
The lawsuit also alleges a commissioner was “unduly pressured” to recuse himself from planning commission hearings and that Red Wolf orchestrated an effort to have signatories withdraw from the south side petition.
On Oct. 29, a Wyandotte County district judge denied the Unified Government’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s case against the south tract. The court found the lawsuit against the north tract may proceed if commissioners make a “final decision” regarding the zoning application.
Palmer, the plaintiff, ran for election to the Wyandotte County Board of Public Utilities but lost his race on Tuesday.
Steve Sessions, a community organizer who operates the “We the People of Wyco” Facebook page and who is not involved in the lawsuit, said in an interview the developer needed eight fewer signatures on the petition in order to proceed without supermajority approval.
“Conveniently,” Sessions said, “eight people that signed the petition then retracted their petition via a letter that was written and notarized by Polsinelli Law Firm.”
Polsinelli Law Firm, which did not reply to inquiries for this story, is representing Red Wolf in its application process.
Sessions said elected officials have not been transparent with the community or articulated the benefits the project will bring.
“We send hundreds of emails asking for a response on the record,” Sessions said. “None of them are ever responded to.”
As advances in artificial intelligence drive the proliferation of data centers around the country, developers and municipalities have been eager to cash in. The often-massive buildings house computer servers that handle everything people do online, from processing Amazon orders to answering Google queries. Often, data centers are built before corporate tenants commit to the location, drawing comparisons to real estate “flippers.”
“The risk to our health and the risk to our bills of just inviting this kind of real estate flipper style of data center from Red Wolf is great,” said Ty Gorman, senior campaign strategist for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Coalition.
In many parts of the country, data centers are increasing energy costs for residents, although the Kansas Corporation Commission, which regulates public utilities, on Thursday approved a plan to allocate energy costs to try to ensure residents don’t foot the electric bill for data centers.
Gorman said hyperscale development should be focused on attracting end users like Google that have committed to green energy and will invest in infrastructure to help communities develop resilient, renewable energy sources.
“The prospect of being able to have the commission say this real estate flipper has to sell it to someone who’s willing to do that, like Google, is a big opportunity,” Gorman said.
Kasia Tarczynska, a senior research analyst at Good Jobs First who studies data center subsidies, said there has been a lot of buildup and “talk about a bubble.”
“Big tech companies are hiding behind developers. It’s a huge, huge problem,” she said, “because the public should have access to information. Do people want to have this company as a community member?”
She said speculative projects that don’t end up attracting a corporate tenant can leave communities stuck with massive, empty buildings.
Red Wolf is owned by Aaron Wolofsky of Brooklyn, New York. According to the Kansas City Business Journal, Red Wolf’s headquarters is listed as a residential address in New York, and it has proposed, but not yet built, two data centers in Georgia.
Greg Kindle, president of the Wyandotte Economic Development Council, sees the data center project as a welcome and badly needed investment in the community.
“We need some pretty good shots in the arm,” he said.
Kindle emphasized the need to fund local schools, noting the project is sited within Piper School District, the second-fastest growing school district in the state. He said the project, when complete, would generate more than $2 million in property tax revenue annually for each of its six buildings. The data center will also pay local taxes on its power usage, he said.
“It runs 24/7 every day, and it’s the same consistent load,” he said. “Those are really consistent revenues.”
Kindle said the project will generate between 40 and 60 confirmed jobs, and possibly as many as 100. These are technical jobs, he said, that generate salaries around $100,000 a year.
He said that the Parallel Parkway location is ideal because it can support the power and water needs of the data center. He also said Red Wolf will be responsible for upgrading infrastructure like substations and transmission systems.
Some opponents say the project does not suit the location’s agricultural and residential character. Kindle said the project will generate substantial revenues on a relatively small footprint.
“General Motors pays about $3.5 million annually in property taxes on four million square feet,” he said. “We’re looking at one data center generating $2.4 million a year on 330,000 square feet.”
Data centers have become notorious for their energy requirements and for the massive amount of water needed to cool their servers.
“AI likes to represent itself as a clean technology, but AI must be powered by the grid,” said Alex Boynton, a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Kansas. “There are significant parts of the U.S. grid that are still run by fossil fuel energy, which calls into question the validity of those claims.”
The water needs of the data center remain unclear. Kindle said water requirements will be determined by the tenant. Some newer technologies, such as closed-loop systems, reuse water but require more energy.
“These folks aren’t planning to use a significant amount of water,” Kindle said. “They’re going heavier on power and less on water.”
But Gorman, of the Sierra Club, said the proposed project would double the energy usage of the county.
As federal dollars for renewable energy disappear under the Trump Administration, the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the flow of electricity for Kansas and 13 other states, is working to transition away from a reliance on coal.
The Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities still utilizes coal for 39% of its power generation.
Boynton said “AI is coming, one way or another.”
With AI, data centers are inevitable, he said.
“I think everybody’s rushing in on the current gold mine,” Boynton said. “But it can be a double-edged sword. We need to take a long, hard look into the environmental consequences and a long, hard look into the benefits, and whether or not they’ll include everybody.”
Sessions, the community organizer, said he isn’t opposed to responsible development. He pointed to the recently approved data center in De Soto as an example.
“That project was handled very well,” he said, noting that De Soto did a good job ofarticulating community impacts and benefits. But the Red Wolf Project, he said, was approved by the zoning commission in just six weeks.
“I’m not anti-data center,” he said. “We obviously need these and they are revenue generators, but the way it’s presented is not truthful. It is not how we should be allowing businesses to do business in our community.”
The project leaves too many questions unanswered, he said.
“If it’s already irresponsible at the very beginning, what kind of disaster is going to happen later?” he said.
This article was written for a class at the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications and distributed through the Kansas Press Association.
