City, CRG Meet in Closed Session; Updated Festus Data Center Design Discussed
Date Posted: July 7, 2026
Posted In: News, Projects,
From Leader Publications: CRG officials presented what they described as a “refined conceptual design” for the company’s proposed Festus data center development project during a Monday night closed session of the City Council.
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.
The company issued a written statement Monday night about its presentation to the council, as well as to announce FestusForward.com, what the statement described as “a dedicated website where residents can review project materials, follow updates as the proposal advances, submit questions and access a copy of the presentation delivered to the city, along with additional context.”
The written statement said the data center development would use less than half of the property at the site.
“More than half of the site, approximately 188 acres or 52 percent of the property, would remain permanently preserved, protecting the ridgeline and existing tree buffers,” it said.
Among the points listed in a FAQ section of the FestusForward.com website are:
- After initially planning to build a 1-gigawatt campus with 12 two-story buildings, the project concept has been downsized to a 600-megawatt facility with four single-story buildings and larger setbacks from residential neighborhoods in response to community concerns.
- CRG has updated its planned cooling system for the data center development to be “closed loop,” meaning it reuses the same water instead of using new water and it produces little to no wastewater discharge. The site also asserts no private wells will be used for the project.
- CRG pays for its own power and equipment, not Festus residents. “If the project’s electricity use exceeds 1 GW, we will fund a $3 million payment to the city for residential electric rate relief – applied as a direct credit on resident utility accounts,” the company asserts on the website.