Like many cities across the U.S., St. Louis is grappling with how to handle the challenge of allowing data centers to build within city limits. On one hand, the massive facilities offer tax revenue and job growth. Yet they also cause concern among citizens worried about utility rate increases and decreased quality of life due to water use and increased noise.

St. Louis responded to this debate by placing a moratorium on new data centers. Now, reversing course, the city will not pause new data center proposals. Instead, it’s tightening the rules that govern them.

Mayor Cara Spencer said she will sign an executive order that keeps the door open to data center investment while requiring far more disclosure and community input. The order, paired with a Board of Aldermen resolution introduced by Alderwoman Anne Schweitzer, launches a five-month effort to write data center-specific provisions into the city’s zoning and water codes.

Major Debate

The move follows weeks of local debate, and contrasts sharply with nearby St. Charles, which imposed a one-year moratorium in August after public outcry over a $1 billion project known as Project Cumulus.

Now with St. Louis’s new approach, any data center proposal must go through a public hearing and the conditional-use process. Developers will be required to answer a detailed checklist of questions. These include projected electricity demand and water use, distance from homes, size and noise profile, expected tax revenue, and the net impact on surrounding property owners. Data center owners must be disclosed upfront, a regulation developed to prevent previous concern about shielded sponsors.

Second, the city will draft permanent rules in seven categories, including site context, infrastructure and utility impacts, and community and economic effects. Board President Megan Green framed the approach as a balance: data centers can expand the city’s tax base, but only if guardrails address environmental impacts and utility costs.

Regulation as Competitive Advantage

These changes will soon have impact. Green Street’s $600 million data center proposal near the city’s Armory and City Foundry is already scheduled for a conditional-use hearing on Sept. 25. That review will be an early test of the city’s new disclosure strategy and of how commissioners weigh ratepayer risk against private investment.

The mayor’s order is meant to close that gap without signaling that St. Louis is anti-business. The city wants data centers, but it wants them with transparency, public hearings, and hard accounting for their draw on the grid and the aquifer. The five-month code-writing window will include public input and consultation with labor and environmental groups.

It’s a bet on regulation as a competitive advantage: if St. Louis is able to demonstrate it can host data centers without shifting costs onto residents, it can attract the data center industry on its own terms. If not, projects may head to jurisdictions willing to trade speed for scrutiny. For now, St. Louis is choosing scrutiny.