KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Nearly 500 acres off Interstate 435 and US Highway 169 are going to become another data center campus in Kansas City's Northland.
Google's existing data center campus near Worlds of Fun could be getting a sister site 14 miles up the road.
Port KC is set to issue $10 billion in bonds for a data center campus that is widely believed to belong to Google, though officials would not confirm that information.
Port KC's president and CEO Jon Stephens said the bond issuance is not publicly funded and is not backed by taxpayer dollars.
"Taxable revenue bonds are effectively a contractual promise that the company will spend those private dollars to build what they say they are building," Stephens said.
Stephens is one of many economic leaders in Kansas City, Missouri, who has prioritized bringing data centers into the metro.
"There is a long-term value of attracting and retaining those large pieces of infrastructure for our community," Stephens said.
But not everyone agrees with giving data center companies billion-dollar tax breaks and bonds.
More than a dozen community members and leaders with Sunrise Movement KC showed up at Port KC's board meeting on Monday to voice their opposition.
"It just seems like it's an issue where there are a lot of reasons to say no and not a lot of real good reasons to say yes," Sky Mart said.
Mart, a teacher in the Northland, said he's concerned data centers don't pay sales tax in Missouri, and therefore schools miss out on the revenue that can come from $10 billion worth of equipment.
"The tax issue as a whole makes me feel very upset," Mart said. "That is money that the schools desperately need."
Other residents don't mind a data center as long as it delivers on the community benefits.
"We need jobs, not promises of jobs, but actual jobs," Bill Drummond said. "We do not need a token amount of money given over to the school district. I will be Google's best friend if they institute a community benefit agreement that benefits the city as a whole."
Community benefit agreements are written contracts that outline specific beneficiaries for mass investments, such as data centers. Port KC confirmed they prioritized that type of agreement with Project Mica, the official name of the reported Google data center campus in the Northland.
"We do believe that [data centers] will help and be beneficial by helping to build out the infrastructure," Stephens said. "Then different, non-data center programs can come in and be built more efficiently and bring more jobs and opportunity."
Missouri keeps data center sales tax exemptions confidential. But other data center states, including Virginia, lost $903 million from data center tax breaks.
"While people talk a lot about the discount of that, it still is millions of new dollars for our schools," Stephens said.
KSHB 41 reporter Isabella Ledonne asked Stephens if those millions of dollars go toward schools, to our communities, when we think about the tax abatement's that data centers receive in Missouri.
"The data centers in Kansas City are still pretty new," Stephens answered. "As those come online, you'll start to see more [dollars]. From our perspective, we work hard to make certain that those programs are guaranteed."
Port KC did not discuss the bond issuance at Monday's meeting because they said developers did not submit a key financial component for the bond approval.
Board commissioners are set to vote at the Port KC meeting on May 12.
Stories part of the Data, Dollars & Demand series taking an in depth look at data centers in Missouri can be found here.
