Before a hostile crowd, the Festus City Council approved a data center development agreement with CRG Acquisition during a special meeting Monday night at the Festus High School gym.
CRG of St. Louis announced in late 2025 its plan to develop a data center on 361 acres north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC in town. The announcement soon became a source of controversy, with a significant number of individuals and groups speaking out against the project, while others have come out for it.
CRG, the data center development arm for Clayco, will develop the property, and then a data center company will operate it, although no operator has yet been identified. Clayco is the same company that in August 2025 withdrew its plans to develop a 440-acre data center in St. Charles.
The council voted 6-2 to approve the agreement. Those voting for it were: Jim Collier and Dave Boyer of Ward 1; Bobby Venz and Kevin Dennis of Ward 3; and Jim Tinnin and Michael Cook of Ward 4. Council members Staci Templeton and Brian Wehner of Ward 2 cast the no votes.
“While I am optimistic with the benefits a development such as this can bring to the community, I did have some reservations, which I have stated before, and given those concerns, I voted no,” Templeton said Tuesday when asked why she voted against the motion.
Wehner did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Before Monday night’s meeting, the city announced public comments would be accepted only if three-fourths of the council approved a motion allowing it. Mayor Sam Richards made a motion to allow for two hours of public comment at the start of the session; the council unanimously approved the motion.
Before the meeting, 39 residents had registered to speak. Of those, 27 made it to the podium before the end of the two-hour time allotment. Every citizen who spoke was against the data center project.
Below is a sampling of those comments:
■ Alyssa Harris, among others, said city leaders have insulted citizens opposed to the project by questioning their understanding of the situation.
“As someone with an excellent education, I’m eloquent, and I have a few questions, and if my points seem redundant from previous meetings, well, then, maybe we need to hear them again,” she said. “I already know how this vote’s going to go tonight. I know you’re probably not going to be swayed by anything we have to say. However, I am here to prove that my voice and everyone else’s voice matters.”
■ Chris Ganey, among others, criticized what he said was a lack of transparency in the process to bring about a data center.
“(Clayco-CRG) are experts at coming in through the back door, and they hold secret meetings with the local government, and they get the whole data center project rolling forward before the citizens even realize they need to hire a lawyer,” he said. “In the case of Festus, it sounds like some Sunshine Laws were broken.”
Ganey also criticized city officials for not holding a public vote on the matter.
“Clayco-CRG has turned the entire City Council against us so that, as it stands now, nearly every citizen in Festus has been disenfranchised from this very important (matter).”
■ Mary Buckalew criticized what she said has been city officials’ rush to move the project forward without proper vetting.
“Before you move forward, please demand that studies on environmental impact are done before the dirt gets moved,” she said.
■ Falyn Barnett, 17, was among the speakers who criticized city leaders for ignoring the citizens, adding that her parents are considering moving from town because of the proposed data center.
“You clearly don’t care what any of us have to say,” she said.
■ Travis Layton, a data center opposition leader, said wording in the data center development agreement gives the developer too much leeway through the use of “weasel words.”
“The weasel words are used 19 times in a 29-page document,” he said.
■ Matthew Ramsbottom said he is a beekeeper who has environmental concerns about the project.
“The digital economy is racing ahead, but the climate impacts are just data on a page,” he said. “They show up as a real risk for pollinators, for agriculture and for the systems we all depend on.”
He said hyperscale data centers pose dangers to their surrounding environments.
At the end of the meeting, Mary Youmans said she was not surprised, but disappointed in the council’s vote to approve the agreement. She and others have called for citizens to vote out, or recall, those in Festus government who have supported the project.
“It’s a very sad day in the city of Festus,” she said. “I’ve lost all faith in our mayor.”
Still, she said, data center opponents have not given up on their cause.
“I feel it’s just begun,” Youmans said. “Now we know what we have to do.”
Before the public comments began, city attorney Brian Malone went over what the city stands to gain in the agreement.
“This will be a $6 billion investment for phase one of the project,” he said. “There will be no cap on the city’s utility tax. That alone will provide $8 million annually per year at the start of operation and that will increase to $22 million per year in 2031 when the center reaches full power usage. The developer will pay for a new firehouse for the city up to $5 million and will pay an additional $40 million in community benefit payments to the city of Festus. That will be $3 million per year in years one through five and $5 million per year for years six through 10. Property tax and PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) that the city of Festus will receive will total $89 million over the 25-year period. The total for all taxing districts will be $800 million over 25 years.
“The grand total of property taxes, utility taxes, community benefit payments and PILOTs will be $1.3 billion over the course of the agreement. The agreement will create an estimated 150 jobs, average wages greater than 100 percent of county average wages and the developer will be required to pay for all infrastructure upgrades.”
He said the agreement offers protections to the city and its residents that would not occur if such an agreement were not in place.
“This agreement is not required for a data center to move forward,” Malone said. “If (the motion) were not approved, a data center still could be built, but would just be subject to the city’s ordinances, and it would not be subject to the environmental restrictions on the site that we negotiated as part of the agreement. Additionally, there would not be a voluntary buyout program.”
By the end of Malone’s talk, the crowd nearly drowned out his words through boos and a variety of negative comments.
Richards on Tuesday said he does not believe the data center opponents who have attended city meetings and protested the project represent the majority of its citizens.
“That is not how most people feel in Festus,” he said.
He said the project will ultimately be a boon to the city.
“Yes, I feel it will benefit Festus,” Richards said. “It’s going to take a while, granted, until they get the whole thing built and start running it. But, yes, it’s going to be a benefit to the city of Festus.”
He said he disagrees with those who say city officials rushed the process to move the project along.
“I don’t think we have,” he said.
He said there are still several steps for CRG to take in the data center development process.
“We have to have plans (from the company). They have to submit a ground disturbance plan. Then, preliminary plans before the final plans. All those have to be approved.”
CRG and Clayco leaders in a written statement issued Tuesday said they are pleased to see the project progress and they believe it will positively impact the area.
“Yesterday’s vote is the beginning of a long-term commitment to Festus and Jefferson County,” CRG President Chris McKee said. “This is a first-of-its-kind investment for the area, and its economic benefits will be felt here for generations. Our focus is on the people of this community: creating jobs, supporting local businesses, and being the kind of neighbor Festus deserves.”
Bob Clark, the Clayco-CRG founder, also said he is optimistic about the project.
“Clayco has been delivering quality jobs, projects and meaningful community engagement across Missouri and the greater St. Louis region for more than 40 years,” Clark said. “Every new endeavor is an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to lasting impact. We will focus on creating local jobs, investing in long-term craft training, and generating enduring benefits for the people of Festus and Jefferson County.”
Data center opponents vow to continue fight
The day before the Festus City Council was poised to vote on a data center development agreement, opponents of the project vowed Sunday to continue fighting against it even if the motion passed.
By a vote of 6-2, the Festus City Council on Monday night approved an infrastructure development agreement with CRG Acquisition, which announced in late 2025 its plan to develop a data center on property north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC in town. The announcement soon became a source of controversy, with a significant number of individuals and groups speaking out against the project, while others have come out for it.
The March 29 Wake Up Jeffco meeting drew 120 or more people to the basement floor of American Legion Post 253 in Festus. A common theme during the meeting was its leaders and the group’s attorney, Steve Jeffery, exhorting attendees to keep working against the project they believe will increase electric and water rates, cause noise pollution, cause health problems and hurt property values, among their other concerns.
“Do not give up,” said Judith Ivery of Wake Up Jeffco, who served as the meeting’s emcee. “Do not roll over. There’s still hope.”
In Ivery’s introduction for him, she said Jeffery is representing similar groups to Wake Up Jeffco in opposition to data center projects in multiple sites around Missouri.
Jeffery asked the crowd, “Is the city being credible in this process?” Attendees resoundingly responded, “No.” Jeffery referred to emails between Festus and CRG leaders released in December 2025 through Sunshine Law requests made by citizens.
Jeffery said that some of the emails generated by the city indicate that closed-door meetings were set up between council members and other city officials and CRG representatives, but only a minority of council members were present at those meetings to avoid forming a quorum, thus keeping the meetings private.
He said city officials did this to “skirt” Missouri’s Sunshine Law.
When the city officials’ emails were released in December, Greg Camp, the Festus city administrator at the time, said the meetings were held in order to avoid a quorum between City Council members and CRG representatives and that they were not a unique situation. His last day as city administrator was Feb. 20; he accepted a similar position in Colorado.
Jeffery went over other examples of what he said showed a lack of transparency by Festus officials during the process of moving the data center development project forward.
He also disputed that the agreement between the city and CRG would be the windfall for Festus that city officials have stated.
During a question-and-answer period of the meeting, an attendee asked about recently asserted information by a data center opponent that gravesites, including an old slave cemetery, exist on the property of the proposed data center, and if this information could stop or delay the project. Other crowd members said the gravesite information had not been verified.
Jeffery said those interested in the matter should contact the State Historic Preservation Office, a unit of the Department of Natural Resources, to see if the office would do an investigation.
“But, all of that is triggered by actual information that the remains are there,” Jeffery said. “Just suspecting the remains are there doesn’t do anything for anybody.”