KSHB 41 reporter Isabella Ledonne reports on stories in Overland Park, Johnson County and topics about government accountability. She's been covering data centers extensively as part of the ongoing series, Data, Dollars & Demand. Share your story idea with Isabella.
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Leavenworth County is the latest Kansas City-area community that could be seeing a data center come online.
During a nearly six-hour work session at the March 18 Leavenworth County Commissioner meeting, commissioners heard from Kansas state employees and developer Cloverleaf about a proposed hyperscale data center.
While no official filings have been made with the county regarding data center development, Leavenworth County Commissioner Mike Stieben told KSHB 41 News the proposal is "well beyond its preliminary phases."
The project would be located on nearly 1,000 acres of land on Tailgate Ranch, just south of Tonganoxie.
While specific details about Project Bluestem are still unknown, hyperscale data centers use upwards of 75 megawatts of electricity a day. That's the equivalent of powering 25,000 homes or a small city. The massive tech campuses use millions of gallons of water daily to cool the thousands of computers and hardware servers inside the buildings.
According to the project's website, "Project Bluestem will use a closed-loop cooling system, which greatly reduces water use and will fund any power or transmission upgrades required for the project, to protect against an increase to electric rates."
During the public comment period of the Leavenworth County Commissioner meeting, many Tonganoxie neighbors and residents expressed concerns with the project proposal moving forward.
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Like many other states in the country, Kansas is offering data center developers large incentives to build their projects in the state. Project Bluestem would receive 100% sales and use tax abatement for 20 years, in addition to other local and state tax incentives.
Cloverleaf did not answer commissioner questions about the tech company behind the proposed hyperscale data center. Cloverleaf works directly with Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google and OpenAI.
The company's chief operating officer explained Cloverleaf is a real estate company based out of Houston that specializes in data center development. Cloverleaf's smallest data center campus operates at 500 megawatts of energy, which is about the same power usage of nearly 200,000 homes.
Cloverleaf stated on the project's website that the development is conceptual at this point, and no formal permits or requests have been submitted in Leavenworth County.
Project Bluestem would mark the Kansas City area's 10th hyperscale data center proposal. More information about Kansas City data centers can be found here.
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