Council OK’s 120-day delay for data center consideration

Jeff Schrag: Urgency of issue means city needs to move with expediency.

Springfield City Council passed a 120-day delay on data center applications at a four-minute special meeting June 29.

The sole item of business was a council bill to delay for 120 days the acceptance and processing of applications related to the evaluation, establishment, servicing or expansion of a data center. During that period, the city manager will provide a report on any recommended actions to address the unique characteristics, demands and effects of data center development.

The ordinance allows exceptions to the delay. An application may be considered during the delay period if council determines that it meets three criteria:

• It complies with all existing and foreseeable planned city regulations

• Adequate infrastructure exists or will exist by completion of the project

• Consideration of the application will not be detrimental to public health, safety and welfare.

Councilmember Brandon Jenson attended a data center protest June 23 on the corner of Sunshine Street and Glenstone Avenue, and while there, he collected concerns to be included in a report being compiled during the delay period. Deputy City Manager Maurice Jones said the concerns would be incorporated.

One concern raised by at least one protester concerned the special meeting itself. Jenson said he was asked why the vote was happening in a special meeting instead of a regular Monday-night council meeting. He offered Mayor Jeff Schrag an opportunity to address the concern by saying why a special meeting was called.

“Expediency to begin this quickly,” Schrag said.

Schrag said that the special meeting lessens the chance for a developer to submit an application in the time between the introduction of the council bill, which happened June 22, and the vote, with the next regular meeting set for July 13. He also said that unlike a business, council must do its work in public.

“The thought was that we should be as consistent as possible and make this as quick as possible,” Schrag said. “That was the urgency that I felt.”

The ordinance disallows consideration of data center applications by the city or its Board of Public Utilities until Nov. 17. Processing of an application may continue if the Southwest Power Pool has begun studies related to a proposed facility and fees have been submitted.

City Manager David Cameron told Springfield Business Journal in an interview that he had been working with staff since the start of the year to draft a policy on data centers, but the city received an inquiry about a possible data center recently, and that accelerated the need for a policy.

Data centers are not specifically covered in the city’s land development code, Cameron said.

The inquiry concerned a site at 2900 S. National Ave. owned by NSI, A.1 LLC. Trent Overhue, a developer who is at work on a data center in unincorporated Webster County, shares a mailing address with the ownership entity and confirmed with SBJ that he owns the building, which is approximately in the center of the city’s Medical Mile.

Overhue and Ashton Owens are partners in Lumon Solutions LLC, which is developing the Webster County data center, but neither Overhue nor Owens were willing to comment on whether the proposed Springfield data center is a Lumon Solutions project.