Ingrams August 2023

Missouri: Data Central Lured by attractive costs of for land and power, a growing tech sector, and a qualified work force, data-center operators have made expansion in and into Missouri a priority. F rom coast to coast, 10 markets ac count for nearly half of the esti mated 2,500 data centers in the

KC Street Car And it already has a head start in supporting global-scale data enterpris es, such as St. Louis-based World Wide Technology (annual revenues: north of $17 billion), and more recently, the ad dition of the National Geospatial-Intel ligence Agency’s $2 billion headquarters coming online in St. Louis. Drilling down a bit on the growth factors, we see that: That, however, might be the tip of a very big digital iceberg: A company official said Meta is evaluating a buildout that could total a staggering $40 billion in land acquisition, construction, and development of a larger data center campus over the next two decades. To put that into perspective, the Cerner Corp.’s south Kansas City Innovations Campus, originally projected to run $4.65 billion when it was announced in 2016, was billed as the largest development in the history of Missouri. Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner last year calls into question whether the full project will be completed as envisioned, but even if it is, it would be dwarfed—eightfold—by the numbers Meta is throwing around. Kansas City, in fact, has been ranked the third-fastest-growing tech market in the U.S. The reasons for the current wave of optimism are many. For one, the state already employs more than 56,600 people in the IT sector, according to fig ures from the Census Bureau, and the broader technology sector accounts for 100,000 jobs. Bisected by the Missouri River and straddling the Mississippi, Missouri sits atop small oceans of water needed to cool those concentrations of servers.

n Energy rates in the state are considerably lower than national aver ages—by 24 percent for Ameren, which generally serves the eastern half of the state. Compare its $13.4 cents per kilo watt hour charge with the 19.3 centers per kwh in New York, or the 19.9 cents per kwh levied in California—when the grid there is operating. Or, near the top of the scale in the lower 48 states, the 21.1-cent rate in Massachusetts. When you consider industry estimates that as much as 70 percent of a data center’s cost is eaten up by power, the calculus tilts quickly in Missouri’s favor. n On the talent site, the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development says more than 338,496 students are currently enrolled in four-year and two-year higher education programs. That allows the state to turn out more than 4,600 engineers every year, from undergraduate to Ph.D. levels. n Missouri really shines when you look at a combination of land prices for these sprawling facilities—and cross-tab that with the population (read: worker availability). According to Landsearch. com, the Show-Me State ranks 18th in average price per acre of land statewide, at slightly more than $12,700 per acre. That ranking precisely matches the state’s order among states by population. Why does this matter? Because of the 17 other states with lower land prices, only one—Tennessee—had more residents. You can build cheaper in Wyoming, but who’s going to run the place? Gov. Mike Parson sums it up best. As he said during the Meta announcement in Kansas City, “The Show-Me State stands out as a rising technology hub due to our strategic location, skilled

U.S., generally clustered in along the Pacific Coast—from Los Angeles to Sili con Valley, Portland and Seattle—to an East Coast stripe running through New York, New Jersey and the nation’s capi tal, then south to Atlanta. Missouri isn’t a part of that con versation—yet. But billions of dollars of data-center development and invest ment are quickly changing the tenor of that conversation, with the Kansas City region, in particular, elevating its status to what industry observers call the “secondary markets.” And the glide path indicates the Show Me State is about to flex some serious muscle in that space. A combination of factors increasingly makes this region top of mind for global IT interests scouting out locations for massive data-server farms. The reasons are easy to under- stand: We have land—lots of it, and underpriced when compared to the coasts; we have a stable, affordable electric supply dominated by two major electric utilities, each of which has a nuclear generating station in its arsenal; and we have a rock-solid telecom infrastructure; and we have the workers able to fill positions quickly. Perhaps the most impressive dev elopment to date in that sphere, measured by the planned capital investment, is the announcement by Facebook parent Meta that it would invest $800 million into a 1 million square-foot hyper-scale data center at the rising Golden Plains Technology Park, a few miles north of Downtown Kansas City.

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