Second Marshfield data center pauses plans

An official with Swarm Systems Inc. said his company is pausing in its effort to establish a data center in the industrial park within the Marshfield city limits.

“We’re going to take a beat,” the official, Amir Atefi, said in an interview.

At this point, that’s not hard, according to Atefi, who said the project has been mostly theoretical to this point – a fact-finding mission, as it was described by Marshfield City Administrator Sam Rost in recent Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Atefi said the fact-finding has included a review of factors like zoning, power and environmental considerations.

“We haven’t completed any of that,” he said. “It’s not an active project.”

And now, he said, the company is pausing its review.

“If we choose to reengage, we will have a public forum first before we get to any city submittals,” he said.

Atefi said projects should begin by approaching the community.

“If we choose to make it an active project, we’ll get in front of the community first,” he said. “They’ll know about it before anybody.”

Atefi said some in the community may want to stop the project, but as of now, there’s nothing to stop.

“Nothing’s been started yet,” he said.

He declined to disclose the company’s investment toward predevelopment efforts or the projected cost for the facility.

Swarm Systems expressed an interest in an 8.2-acre portion of a larger parcel of property at 630 George St. in the city’s industrial park, a site that is about 4 miles from the Lumon Solutions center in unincorporated Webster County, according to an SBJ review of Webster County assessor records.

Renderings of the data center in a recognizable Marshfield setting appeared on the Swarm Systems website as recently as May 18, though the images and information were removed that day. The website referred to the site as the Missouri campus, and it promised 20 megawatts, “ready for service in mid-2027.” There was a button for potential clients to submit inquiries.

The disappearance of the webpage is consistent with Atefi’s characterization of a project that is on hold. Prior to that, the company was actively engaged in a review of the site, as emails between Atefi and the city reveal.

A January email from Atefi to city officials explains, “At a high level, the proposed use is a non-public data center building that primarily houses computer services and related electrical and mechanical infrastructure. … Staffing is limited, and the facility is largely automated with on-site operations teams performing periodic preventive maintenance.”

The email describes a facility with 60,000 square feet of building area, subject to change during design, with a maximum height of 39.5 feet. Parking would be sized for the largest shift, estimated at 15 employees, and outdoor electrical and mechanical equipment and emergency standby generators would support the building on a standby basis.

Rost confirmed that formal plans were not submitted, and he noted that the parcel split was not yet recorded with the county recorder’s office. Rost said that kind of inquiry is not uncommon.

“We get lots of calls and lots of inquiries about things, and 99.9% of them never come to fruition,” he said.

He said there is a public perception that the city has lied to the public about the data center, with many residents wondering why the community was not told about the conversations that took place.

Questions from site selection teams are routine and often come to nothing, according to Rost.

While there’s conversation about a data center possibly going in, that parcel could just as easily be sold to a neighboring manufacturer for expansion.

“Until we have something set in stone, this is just another inquiry,” he said.

Sometimes inquiries do come to fruition, Rost added, giving the example of a Scooter’s Coffee that is soon coming to Marshfield. That’s another development that wasn’t talked about in the early stages, he said.

Rost said he also has multiple examples of site research that results in nothing, among them a car wash that was almost developed on a site near the city’s Walmart store but then ultimately was abandoned by the developer.

“I’m as transparent as it gets,” he said. “I’m happy to visit with anybody and say, ‘Here’s what we did, and here’s how we did it.’”

Marshfield’s first experience with data centers is with Lumon Solutions LLC, which is actively building a center on a 5-acre site on Rifle Ridge Road, outside the Marshfield city limits to the north.

SBJ has reported on community efforts to halt the Lumon Solutions project, including a May 11 public meeting where Webster County Commissioners were asked to place a moratorium on the project. Hundreds of people from Webster County and elsewhere attended that meeting at Marshfield High School.

Marshfield zoning
Swarm Systems began its inquiry into Marshfield at the same site being pursued by Lumon Solutions, Atefi said. Rost confirmed that Swarm Systems had inquired about the possibility of hooking into city facilities at the unincorporated site.

“That was pretty well basically a no,” Rost said.

Rost also confirmed email communications with Swarm Systems in December 2025 and January of this year, with no conversations since aside from notification to the company of a new city zoning measure requiring a conditional use permit for data centers in the city limits. That measure was passed by the Marshfield Board of Aldermen April 23.

“The language we put into place came about because of those first conversations and all of the surrounding communities having all of these things pop up,” he said. “Rather than not having anything in our code, we wanted to make sure we put a process in there.”

Rost said that without the conditional use permit ordinance, a data center could go into the heavy industrial zoning district without needing any approval from the Board of Aldermen.

Without the conditional use permit requirement, the developer would simply have to submit plans for staff review of aspects like size, number of entrances, utility usage, landscaping, lighting and stormwater.

“If you meet those requirements, then we will issue a permit and you’ll just roll on,” he said.

With the conditional use permit requirement, a data center development would have to be reviewed by the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission and approved by the Board of Aldermen – processes that include public hearings – in order to move forward. Developments could also be given other requirements, like erecting sound barriers, requiring a certain percentage of power from renewable resources, drilling its own well or paving a road.

“We wanted to make sure we put a process in there,” Rost said.

He emphasized that he is willing to meet with anyone who has questions.

“I don’t want to see the community divided any further than it already is,” he said. “We’re here to help everyone, and I hope everyone takes us up on that.”

Atefi said the city’s new conditional use permit process is still in the evaluation phase for Swarm Systems, which has to figure out how to proceed with that new requirement in place.

He also stressed the importance of engaging with the community.

Atefi said the Lumon Solutions site outside of the city limits had no zoning and no permitting requirements.

“There was nothing there to stop Lumon Solutions from going ahead and rolling dozers,” he said. “We would not have begun construction or even gone about it the way that they have. They didn’t ask anyone or tell anyone. It’s not a good look for the industry, and it’s not the right way to do business.”

Benefits outlined
Atefi said Swarm Systems officials are reading comments online and trying to understand the community’s priorities.

He outlined some of the benefits of the proposed Swarm Systems facility, which would be in an existing industrial corridor and not near existing homes or commercial operations.

He also said he feels strongly about the engineering of the proposed facility, with a closed system that would use only as much water as a dozen single-family homes.

“Essentially, a data center could use less water than almost any other use on that piece of land while bringing tremendous economic benefit to Marshfield schools,” he said.

Atefi said in the data center industry, any facility that comes under a 50-megawatt threshold is considered a small project, but he noted this one could be meaningful to the community in multiple ways.

The company would employ workers for three shifts, with at least eight people on any given shift. It would also provide training to local workers for positions that pay $80,000-$120,000 per year – more for higher-level jobs and less for entry-level or janitorial-type positions. The center would also contribute to the city’s tax base. He said that compares favorably to warehouse positions that might otherwise take that piece of land, if it is developed at all. All power would be through existing headroom in an adjacent substation, and if expansion took place, 100% of the cost would be borne by Swarm Systems for procurement, installation and engineering, he said.

“It would be a net economic benefit, a net job creator, and effectively use almost no water,” he said.

Atefi said the community has a right to be upset about the Lumon Solutions development.

“I entirely sympathize with the voices in that community,” he said. “The community has been wronged – there’s no other way to put it.”

He said Swarm Systems intended to be the first data center in the community, and he intended to roll it out in a way that brought the community into the process.

‘Not the end of the world’
Atefi said there’s a chance the Swarm Systems data center will not happen in Marshfield.

“If it doesn’t work out with this project, it’s not the end of the world,” he said. “The goal here is not to force something through.”

He said hyperscale data centers can occupy footprints of 2,000 acres, as opposed to the 8 acres his company is proposing in Marshfield, but the pros can outweigh the cons. These include strong valuations for property tax, which are never abated for schools.

“We would ask for 0% abatement,” he said, adding that those projects could be used however the county sees fit.

Atefi said the question is whether the Marshfield community would be receptive to a data center in its existing industrial corridor.

He added that the project has to make sense financially for Swarm Systems, too. Whereas a hyperscale center, costing billions of dollars, can easily roll upgrades into project costs, that’s not the case for a small-scale center. Thus, a conditional use permit that requires major infrastructure upgrades as a condition of construction might not pencil out, financially.

“If there’s an opening for us to find a win-win, I’m happy to go through as many steps as we need to get there,” he said.