No plans yet submitted for proposed Festus data center project; civil lawsuits loom

While controversy over a proposed data center development project continues to rage in Festus, city officials say they have received no recent requests to move the project forward.

CRG of St. Louis has said it plans to develop a data center on property north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC in Festus. As those intentions became public, opposition immediately arose.

After the June 8 Festus City Council meeting, Mayor Sam Richards said the city still has not received anything from the developer in regard to permissions it will need to move forward with construction.

“We don’t have any plans submitted or any permit requests,” he said.

On June 12, Jim Walker, the city’s building and planning director, said the situation with CRG had not changed in regard to construction plans or permit requests.

CRG continues to plan for its data center project, said Tim O’Connell, CRG vice president of marketing and communications.

“CRG is fully committed to the Festus project and to seeing it built the right way,” O’Connell said in a written statement. “We are thoughtfully shaping the project’s design to address concerns we have heard from the community over the last several months. We look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with the elected representatives of Festus, share the improvements we are working on and build a path forward together.”

Meanwhile, data center development project opponents said they remain on task despite the recent setback of the Festus City Council rejecting recall election petitions the opponents had submitted against Mayor Richards and City Council members Dave Boyer of Ward 1, Kevin Dennis of Ward 3 and Mike Cook of Ward 4, all of whom have supported the data center development project.

“We’re working on plan B,” said resident Erica Carter. “We’re looking at conflict of interest with the mayor and councilmen participating in a vote regarding them.”

Lori Merriman, another active opponent of the data center development, said project opponents remain dedicated to fighting it.

“I think it’s more intense now,” she said. “Nobody’s backing down. It’s a war of battles. You win some battles, you lose some. We’re going to keep fighting the battles.”

Merriman said Wake Up Jeffco, a group she works with, is continuing with a lawsuit it filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court on April 8 aimed at stopping the data center development project.

Attorney Steve Jeffery filed the suit of Wake Up Jeffco LLC, Sherman Doyle, Vernon Valish, Sharon Valish and Rozilyn Daniels v. City of Festus, Missouri and CRG Acquisition LLC in St. Louis County Circuit Court. The individuals listed as plaintiffs with Wake Up Jeffco are property owners who live on Glenkee Court near the project site.

“There have been motions to dismiss, which we have responded to,” Merriman said.

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.

Below is a timeline compiled from Leader stories dating back to October 2025, when news of the project started to become public.

■ Oct. 16, 2025: The Festus Planning and Zoning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend to the Festus City Council members to approve adding data center regulations to municipal codes.

■ Oct. 27, 2025: The Festus City Council unanimously approved regulations governing data centers, which became Section 405.185 of the municipal codes. The regulations govern topics such as notifying property owners within 1,000 feet of a proposed data center development and other matters such as noise, lighting and parking.

■ Nov. 10, 2025: The Festus City Council unanimously approved the city annexing several pieces of land totaling about 240 acres north of Hwy. 67 and west of Hwy. CC which city officials said CRG had expressed interest in.

■ Nov. 24, 2025: The Festus City Council unanimously approved rezoning of both the property annexed into the city Nov. 10 and other property already in the city for the proposed data center, a total of what was then described as about 370 acres. Parts of it were rezoned from R-1 (single-family residential) and other parts from N-1 (non-urban) to I-1 (industrial) so a data center could be built and operated there.

■ December 2025: The city released information following Sunshine Law requests from Festus-area residents that included emails from city officials had been in discussions with CRG going back to at least August 2025. Greg Camp, the city administrator at the time, described the discussions with CRG involved “hypotheticals” only, no concrete plans. In addition, the emails indicated that City Council members met in small numbers so as to prevent quorums, thus keeping the meetings private.

■ Feb. 9, 2026: Data center opponents submitted a petition with 1,400 signatures calling for a public vote to ban data center development projects for 10 years to the City Council.

At a previous council meeting, Camp said the city has no legal obligation to react to petitions since Festus council members never adopted framework in the city’s codes regarding initiative and referendum powers.

Brian Malone, attorney with Lashly and Baer, the city’s law firm, later said in a written statement Festus cannot put such a referendum on the ballot.

■ March 30, 2026: The City Council in a 6-2 vote approved a data center development agreement with CRG. Council members Dave Boyer and Jim Collier of Ward 1, Bobby Venz and Kevin Dennis of Ward 2 and Jim Tinnin and Mike Cook of Ward 4 voted for the agreement, while Brian Wehner and Staci Templeton of Ward 2 voted against.

■ April 7, 2026: Incumbents Collier, Wehner, Venz and Tinnin all lost their bids for reelection, losing to Karl Weekley in Ward 1, Allen Joseph McCarthy in Ward 2, Dan Moore in Ward 3 and Rick Belleville in Ward 4. The newcomers had all come out against the project.

■ April 13, 2026: Templeton resigned from her council seat. The seat remains vacant.

■ Spring 2026: Data center opponents collected signatures and turned in petitions calling for recall votes on Mayor Richards, as well as Boyer, Dennis and Cook to the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office. The County Clerk’s Office certified the signatures on Richards, Dennis and Cook May 28 and Boyer on June 1, sending the results to Festus officials June 1.

■ June 8: By 4-3 votes, the City Council rejected all of the recall petitions.