With the Festus City Council poised to vote on a data center development agreement at a meeting this evening, opponents of the project vowed Sunday to continue fighting against it even if the motion passes.
The Festus City Council has scheduled a special meeting for 6 p.m. today at Festus High School, 501 Westwind Drive, with the agenda listing Bill No. 4876, an ordinance to approve an infrastructure development agreement with CRG Acquisition, as the only action item on it.
CRG of St. Louis 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, where leaders of the Wake Up Jeffco group against the project said they expect the City Council motion on the agreement to pass.
A common theme during the Wake Up Jeffco 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.
Greg Camp, formerly the Festus city administrator before leaving to take a similar position in Colorado, at the time of the release of the city official email releases said the City Council members had with CRG representatives in order to avoid a quorum was not a unique situation to the data center project.
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 is going to be the windfall for Festus 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 that 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.”
Festus special meeting public comments section not yet decided
During the Wake Up Jeffco gathering, attendees brought up that Festus officials had announced that no public comment is provided for at a special meeting unless council members approve a motion for a public comment section by a three-fourths of the council.
A written statement from the city released March 27 said Mayor Sam Richards intends to make the motion at the special meeting to allow a public comments section and if that motion gains the required approval, a public comments section will occur. Potential speakers have been allowed to sign up to speak through the Festus city clerk with the understanding that such a public comment period may or may not occur.