CRG officials presented what they described as a “refined conceptual design” for the company’s proposed Festus data center development project during a Monday night closed session of the City Council.
CRG of St. Louis announced in late 2025 its plan to develop a hyperscale data center on 361 acres north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC.
CRG, which is the St. Louis-based data center development arm for Clayco, has estimated the cost of developing the facility at $6 billion. In the Festus project, CRG would develop the property, and then a data center company would operate it, although no operator has yet been identified.
The company issued a written statement Monday night about its presentation to the council, as well as to announce FestusForward.com, what the statement described as “a dedicated website where residents can review project materials, follow updates as the proposal advances, submit questions and access a copy of the presentation delivered to the city, along with additional context.”
The written statement said the data center development would use less than half of the property at the site.
“More than half of the site, approximately 188 acres or 52 percent of the property, would remain permanently preserved, protecting the ridgeline and existing tree buffers,” it said.
Among the points listed in a FAQ section of the FestusForward.com website are:
■ After initially planning to build a 1-gigawatt campus with 12 two-story buildings, the project concept has been downsized to a 600-megawatt facility with four single-story buildings and larger setbacks from residential neighborhoods in response to community concerns.
■ CRG has updated its planned cooling system for the data center development to be “closed loop,” meaning it reuses the same water instead of using new water and it produces little to no wastewater discharge. The site also asserts no private wells will be used for the project.
■ CRG pays for its own power and equipment, not Festus residents.
“If the project’s electricity use exceeds 1 GW, we will fund a $3 million payment to the city for residential electric rate relief – applied as a direct credit on resident utility accounts,” the company asserts on the website.
■ The company will have a full sound study performed before “any permit is given,” the site says, and CRG will conduct post-build confirmation studies and ongoing monitoring to meet Festus sound regulations in its data center ordinance.
■ In the CRG development agreement with the city, it committed to a voluntary buyout of 12 homes anticipated to fall within 1,000 feet of the nearest data center building. The revised conceptual design does not have any homes within 1,000 feet of the nearest proposed data center building, but the company will still offer the buyout to the 12 homes with improved conditions in recognition of homeowners’ concerns, according to the site.
Mayor Sam Richards said he appreciated the CRG presentation.
“It was a good meeting,” Richards said Tuesday. “We got a lot of information, cleared up a lot of things, and I think it’s a good step forward. You know, we’re excited about it. I’m excited about the whole thing.”
He said it was a closed session meeting, “because it had to do with contract negotiations.”
He said he believes CRG is answering concerns brought up by citizens since the project was made public.
“Yes, I do,” Richards said. “And, we’re planning to have an open house meeting in late July, early August.”
Brian Malone of Lashly and Baer, the city’s law firm, in a written statement went into more details as to why it was a closed meeting.
“The purpose of last night’s meeting was for the council members to get an update on the development, to address any concerns the council members (particularly the new council members) had with the development agreement with CRG, to discuss and consider potential amendments to the agreement, and to discuss contractual terms for the water infrastructure plan contemplated by the development agreement (and for legal advice as needed for any of those topics),” he said.
But, data center opponent Mary Fakes said the closed session meeting follows a pattern established by city leaders in regard their handling of the data center development project.
“I saw the email (with the CRG written statement),” Fakes said. “It’s very disappointing they’re not upholding what Bob Clark (executive chairman and founder of Clayco and CRG) said that if the citizens don’t want them, they won’t come. That was at his press conference (in April).
“Personally, I think it’s shameful. Once again, behind closed doors, they had a meeting with CRG. CRG has promised two public meetings and has not had them. All of the meetings, just like before, have been behind closed doors.”
She said she believes that the citizens voting out all City Council incumbents up for election in April and a recent recall effort she helped run against the mayor and several council members who have supported the project showed Clayco-CRG leaders how Fesus citizens stand on the matter.
“My opinion is, they’ve already gotten concerns from their first plans, so they can see the citizens don’t want them,” Fakes said. “They want to dissuade the citizens from (continuing) fighting.”
In the Monday night CRG written statement, Clark said his company is responding to citizen concerns.
“From the beginning, we said we would listen, and this plan reflects that commitment,” he said. “We challenged ourselves to build a better project, not simply the largest one we were entitled to build. The result is a smaller footprint, greater preservation, stronger buffers and a design that responds directly to what we’ve heard from the people of Festus. Launching FestusForward.com is another step in that commitment. We want residents to have direct access to information, to ask questions and to stay engaged as this process continues.”
Clark, in a separate written statement Tuesday morning, said people have misunderstood what he meant in the April press conference.
“My quote in the press conference and what I have said in other places has been misquoted and misconstrued,” Clark said. “At no time did I say we would not do the project if there are opponents. Or did I ever believe we would win every resident over.”