St. Louis is moving toward a temporary halt on new data center projects, echoing a neighboring city’s decisive response to an industry whose energy consumption and land use have prompted major public pushback.
Alderwoman Anne Schweitzer plans to introduce a bill that would place a moratorium on new data centers inside city limits, following a unanimous Planning Commission discussion that endorsed a pause while rules are written. The proposal gained momentum after St. Charles, located just northwest of St. Louis, enacted what officials described as the nation’s first citywide, year-long moratorium on data center construction in late August. The pushback was driven by intense opposition to a $1 billion data center complex known as Project Cumulus.
St. Louis’ planning chief, Don Roe, set the tone in a memo urging a time-limited pause. The city’s zoning code, he wrote, wasn’t designed for data centers—facilities that look like warehouses but consume massive electricity and water. Roe recommended a moratorium while the city develops “land use, environmental, and other regulations,” with an interim step to keep large facilities out of inappropriate locations. His office also suggested updating the city’s energy benchmarking law to require transparency from large operators.
Stressing the Power Grid
As reported in Techstrong.it, concern about energy consumption is a key force driving local pushback, and that’s also true in St. Louis. Roe’s memo estimates that a proposed Midtown facility near the city’s Armory could require as much electricity as roughly 13,000 homes. Missouri regulators are reviewing utility proposals that would govern how electric companies serve these loads and guard against higher rates for other customers.
Mayor Cara Spencer supports a pause paired with clear guardrails, emphasizing that the city is not seeking a blanket prohibition. She cited worries about utility prices and quality of urban life, even as she noted data centers’ role in sectors where St. Louis has a strong presence, including healthcare and biotech. The emerging approach appears to be: slow down now, study the impacts, and write tailored rules to balance data center development with quality of life concerns.
Backers of a moratorium point to the economic tradeoffs. Data centers generate substantial construction work, but permanent staffing is relatively low compared with traditional industrial sites. Roe’s office cited a typical example: a 100,000-square-foot facility might have a mere 10 people on duty at a time, or roughly 30 jobs across three shifts. Downtown advocates also worry that large, fortress-like buildings can diminish street activity essential to a successful core.
Reflecting Nearby St. Charles
The St. Charles episode offered a cautionary tale and perhaps a playbook. After residents packed hearings to challenge Project Cumulus—citing secrecy, power and water use, and potential environmental risks—the developer, CRG, pulled its permit request and the City Council imposed a one-year freeze on all data center applications. Reporting later surfaced documents tying an intermediary entity on the project to Google, though the end user was never publicly confirmed. St. Charles officials framed the pause as time to rebuild trust and rewrite rules.
The regional conversation is widening. The East-West Gateway Council of Governments, a forum where local governments in the St. Louis region work together, agreed to study data center impacts and share findings this fall. The policy landscape is shifting nationally as well, with local pushback delaying or blocking projects across multiple states.
Like cities across the country, St. Louis appears set to tap the brakes, assemble the data, and then write rules to handle a generational shift in technology.
