Meta Announces $800M Data Center in Kansas City

Meta’s upcoming facility. Rendering courtesy of Kansas City Area Development Council

Tech giant Meta has started work on its first data center in Kansas City, Mo., announcing its plan to invest $800 million in the hyperscale facility. The project is situated within Diode Ventures’ 5.5 million-square-foot Golden Plains Technology Park, in Kansas City’s Northland.

The Kansas City Area Development Council partnered with several public and private organizations to facilitate the tech company’s next expansion. Local developer Diode Ventures—a wholly-owned subsidiary of Black & Veatch—received the final approvals for its Golden Plains Technology Park in April last year.

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Meta’s data center will encompass roughly 1 million square feet. The facility is planned to have net-zero carbon emissions and will be 100 percent powered by renewable energy—provided by Evergy. Meta expects to create roughly 1,300 construction jobs and, once fully operational, 100 high-paying IT jobs, according to the announcement. The data center is planned to meet LEED Gold standards, and is expected to come online in 2024.

Diode plans to develop approximately 800 acres of unused land at the southwest corner of the intersection of North-West 128th Street and U.S. Highway 169—spanning Clay and Platte counties. According to a LinkedIn post by Diode’s Senior Development Project Manager, the Golden Plains Technology Park is anticipated to offer 750 megawatts of IT load at full build-out.

Low cost of energy for data centers

Meta is the first of potentially many high-profile companies that Diode and its partners are looking to attract to the massive campus. Architecture firm BNIM and engineering and design consultancy firm Olsson & Associates are among several project partners that were tapped to design and plan the campus.

In a prepared statement, Tim Cowden, president & CEO of Kansas City Area Development Council, said that “(the metro) has more than 5.5 million miles of fiber deployed. This infrastructure, coupled with a dynamic and robust talent pool, provides Meta the resources it needs for long-term success in our market.”

Diode also cited a cheaper cost of energy as one of the main reasons it chose Kansas City. According to its announcement last year, wholesale electric prices in the metro were among the lowest in the nation. Prices on the West Coast were 27 percent higher, by comparison. Additionally, two years ago Missouri passed a special power rate for certain categories of consumer, lowering prices even more for data centers.

In April last year, the Kansas City Council also authorized the issuance of one or more series of taxable industrial revenue bonds, with an aggregate amount of as much as $103.79 billion. As first reported by the Kansas City Business Journal, the developers of Golden Plains Technology Park could see up to $8.2 billion in incentives, granted over a period of several decades. Diode Ventures expects the park to become fully operational by 2032.