De Soto mayor welcomes data center growth, but some residents want the city to slow down
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What is the overall vision for De Soto’s industrial growth according to Mayor Rick Walker?
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From KCUR, this is UpToDate with guest host Madeline Fox. I'm producer Elizabeth Ruiz. The US has more data centers than any other country on Earth. The massive facilities are controversial because they draw heavily on local resources. and could come with environmental risks. But they also bring in a lot of money and they keep the world at our fingertips. In Independence, Missouri, voters ousted some city council members who voted in favor of a data center, and another councilman faces recall. On the Kansas side, residents have pushed back on the development in some areas of rural Johnson County. Today, Madeline Fox is talking about what's happening in DeSoto, Kansas. She's joined by Mayor Rick Walker.
Also joining the conversation is Tony Caldwell, who opposes the data center construction in the area. Let's listen.
So, Mayor Walker, let's start with you. DeSoto's industrial development is is taking off. You know, there's the historic construction of the Pasan Panasonic battery plant. The city council's approved one data center from Beale, and you're in talks with another one. So tell me about your vision for the growth of DeSoto.
Well, the the the vision for growth in DeSoto has kind of been focused on um re uh bringing the former Sunflower Army ammunition plant back to productive use. Um when I was growing up that was a job center. Uh we had um m a great deal of employment out there. We had uh a a thriving downtown and and a lot of things going on in DeSoto. Um when that closed a lot of that stuff went away. And um now that that is finally being cleaned up, I'm I'm happy to see that being cleaned up and I'm I'm the vision is that that would be the job center, the economic engine that uh can can uh to carry DeSoto into the future.
So then tell us about the data center that's approved, uh the Beale data center. Can what does that consist of?
Sure, the Beale Data Center was approved. Uh the development agreement for the Beale Data Center was approved last August. Um it is on the Flint Um Um Industrial Park, the Flint Commerce Center, um, which was originally planned for about six million square feet of logistics warehousing type uh use. And uh the data center uh developers purchase. purchased that property from Flint for the purpose of uh building four data center buildings um to uh uh bring their product uh to to to DeSoto.
So uh this is Kansas is facing like generally an outflow of population. We're seeing um people leave the state for jobs, leave the state for school and not come back. Um and it sounds like your vision for DeSoto is to give them a reason to stay, to give them things to do. Um But uh what you're weighing that it sounds like against some other concerns. So what are you what are the trade offs for uh a data center for a Panasonic in DeSoto?
Well, I mean, growth brings challenges. So we have we have traffic we have uh that we've seen with the construction traffic relative to the Panasonic development. Um now um as they're starting to ramp up, jobs at Panasonic we're seeing that construction traffic again or that traffic uh jobs traffic again. Um so there it's changed to the community and and parts of the community um are new to uh newer to DeSoto, so they might have moved in after the former ammunition plant closed and never saw that um kind of activity that was actually probably more intense when I was growing up traffic wise than than what we're seeing now.
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