Site selector taps city of Marshfield for data center

Last edited 3:37 p.m., May 20, 2026 [Editor's note: This story has been corrected; Lumon Solutions LLC did not reach out to Marshfield officials, according to City Administrator Sam Rost.]

A second data center is eyeing Webster County, this one inside the Marshfield city limits.

Marshfield City Administrator Sam Rost confirmed that the city has received inquiries from Texas-based Swarm Systems Inc., a data center company.

This proposed development is separate from the Lumon Solutions LLC data center now being constructed on Rifle Range Road, north of Marshfield. The Lumon Solutions data center has been the focus of concern by Webster County residents and others over environmental and health considerations, with a meeting involving hundreds of people on May 11.

Emails obtained from the city and verified by Rost reveal that Amir Atefi of New York-based Swarm Systems began communicating with Marshfield officials last year, with a visit to the city by Atefi in November 2025.

The company is interested in an 8.2-acre portion of a larger parcel of property at 630 George St. in the city’s industrial park. The Swarm Systems center would be located roughly 4 miles from the Lumon Solutions center, according to an SBJ review of Webster county assessor records.

On the Swarm Systems website is a rendering of the data center in a recognizable Marshfield setting. It calls the site the Missouri campus, and it promises 20 megawatts, “ready for service in mid-2027.” There is a button for potential clients to submit inquiries.

A January email from Atefi 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.”

Atefi’s email to city officials 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.

No formal plans
In a phone interview today, Rost described the Swarm Systems site visit and Atefi’s email communications as a fact-finding effort, and he said formal plans have not been submitted for the facility. He also said that the parcel split has not been recorded yet with the Webster 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 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.

“As of today, that property still has not changed hands, and it’s not even officially recorded that the property has been broken up,” he said.

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, though it’s one that did come to fruition.

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.’”

Conditional use permit
Augmenting the suspicion of Marshfield residents are two pieces of legislation passed by the city’s Board of Aldermen on April 23, one defining a data center and the other setting data centers as a conditional use within a heavy industrial district.

The first Board of Aldermen measure defines a data center as “a special facility that performs one or more of the following functions: store, manage, process and exchange digital data and information; provide application services or management for various data processing, such as web hosting internet, intranet, telecommunication and information technology.”

Rost said the legislation was put in place following conversations with Swarm Systems regarding the Rifle Range Road site; that company, which was considering the site at the time, had reached out to the city to ask if it could hook into city facilities.

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

Since then, there have been no conversations, Rost said, with the last email exchange with Swarm Systems happening in January, aside from notification to Swarm Systems of the new city zoning measure following its passage.

“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.”

On a related note, current social media conversation indicates plans for two data centers in the city of Republic, so SBJ put the question to Colten Harris, Republic city administrator.

Harris said there is no truth to the rumors.

“We don’t have any applications for data centers,” he said via email.

In Marshfield, 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.”

SBJ reached out to Swarm Systems for comment but did not hear back by publication time.