ORIGINATION: Wyandotte County, KS considering sale of former power plant for 192 MW data center development
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County of Kansas on May 1 will consider a USD 13.6m sale of county property for the development of a 192 MW data center campus on the site of a former power plant.
The project, proposed by PowerTransitionsand called Project Yardbird, is the result of a two-year RFP process in which the Board of Public Utilities (BPU), which manages then property, sought a buyer to assume responsibility and environmental liability for the former Quindaro Power Station 85-acre property at 3601 N. 12th Street.
Without the offloading of the retired power plant property, the county would continue to incur costs and risk for the site.
The purchase price will be reinvested into the remediation costs, which have been preliminarily estimated to exceed USD 20m. PowerTransitions will assume the rest of the costs.
Under the proposal, PowerTransitions will demolish two decommissioned plant structures and part or all of the adjacent water treatment facility, according to city filings.
Both county and PowerTransitions leaders said during the county’s Economic Development and Finance Standing Committee meeting April 28 that the existing transmission infrastructure was an attractive quality for the data center development project because it allows a fasttracking of construction, potentially bringing the project online between 2027 and 2028.
Patrick Brosnan, PowerTransitions’ redevelopment team director, said early plans are to have the full buildout to include two data center buildings and potentially a second phase focused on battery energy storage.
Because it is so early in the process, Brosnan didn’t have specifics, but said the development would generate property, sales and utility tax revenue over its 20-plus-year lifespan, as well as create roughly 500 construction jobs and 50 permanent roles per building.
PowerTransitions plans to begin environmental diligence and hyperscale end-user engagement immediately upon execution of the agreement.
Kansas has been expanding its data center portfolio with new projects, including a QTS–leased 756,000-square-foot data center facility at the New Century Commerce Center in Johnson County and a Red Wolf DCD Properties’ proposed USD 12bn, 600 MW data center campus that will span 400 acres in Kansas City.
*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM US subscribers.
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