Data centers are used to store the computers, processing equipment, energy transfer systems and other hardware used in running artificial intelligence platforms and other digital services, such as saving things in the cloud.
Nebius, a European corporation that creates cloud management systems for AI, is planning to make Independence the heart of its American operations.
Construction on a sprawling data center is set to begin in eastern Independence in summer 2026 pending city approval, according to the city and attorneys for Nebius. Work on the site will continue for 3 to 5 years, with the first buildings set to open in 2028.
The privately funded project will cost about $6.6 billion — not including the hardware used in data center operations, which could cost up to $150 billion over time, according to Nebius — and is not expected to rely on city funding or tax breaks.
“$150 billion investment in our community is obviously a major, major investment,” councilperson Jared Fears said Monday night.
City leaders say the project could generate “tens of millions of dollars” in tax revenue starting in 2028. Jackson County will also benefit directly from tax revenue generated by the Nebius site, as will the Independence and Fort Osage school districts, the Mid-Continent Public Library and the Metropolitan Community College system.
The planned Nebius campus would include at least 10 buildings and would span about 400 acres, or more than 2.5 million square feet. That’s about half the size of the Mall of America, and a little more than twice the size of Arrowhead Stadium. It would take over a significant portion of the Eastgate Commerce Center, an industrial park off of Little Blue Parkway and Missouri Highway 78.
More than 100 residents attended an open house Monday with Nebius staffers to learn more about the scope of the project and how it could affect daily life in the city during construction and beyond. Representatives for the AI company also presented on the planned data center to the Independence City Council on Monday night.
“This is an unprecedented project for Independence,” Councilmember Heather Wiley said Monday. “We’ve never done anything like this before — it’s big.”
LOOKING FOR LAND
Nebius purchased the land at Eastgate Commerce Center last month from Kansas City developer NorthPoint Development, according to city records. Since Eastgate is already zoned for industrial and business use, the company will not have to go through the city’s rezoning process, allowing construction to proceed more quickly than may typically be the case in Independence.
Mark Coulter, an attorney representing Nebius, said that the existing zoning was one of the major factors that drew Nebius to the Independence site.
“It is primed and ready to go for a development of this size and scale,” Coulter said.
The Independence site would be the second Nebius data center in the United States, but the first fully owned by Nebius. It will join a 300-megawatt data center currently under construction in Vineland, New Jersey, which is shared with AI company DataOne.
“This is the one that sets the precedent for all the future projects, no matter where they are,” Coulter said.
Nebius is also co-located within the AI data center owned by Patmos in the former Kansas City Star building at 1601 McGee St. Patmos recently purchased the building after moving into it a year ago, and Nebius became its first tenant last year, renting out server space and energy infrastructure.
The company has similar colocation sites in the United Kingdom, Iceland, Israel and France, along with a data center in Finland.
The center is expected to create 125 full-time jobs, along with contract work in construction, city officials said. Coulter said that Nebius does not currently have any explicit plans to prioritize local labor.
SITE CONCERNS
Along with questions about potential tax revenue and job creation in Independence, city officials questioned Nebius Monday night on how the data center would use local utilities, and voiced concerns about direct impacts on residents who lived nearby.
“There are some really bad actors in the data center space,” Councilmember Heather Wiley said Monday. “Nebius is a newer company … what makes you different?”
While the Kansas City data center contracts with Evergy to power its servers, Independence’s Nebius plant will be significantly larger, with the planned capacity to use up to 800 megawatts of energy at a time. By comparison, one megawatt of energy from coal can power between 400 and 900 homes for a year, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
Rather than contracting with Evergy or another regional provider, the data company plans to open an entirely new power plant to generate electricity for the Nebius campus. The planned plant will be located at the former home of the retired Blue Valley Power Plant in Independence and will be privately financed by Independence Power Partners.
The Blue Valley Power Plant previously processed coal and gas, though Nebius and the city have not specified what kind of power source it will use upon reopening.
The new power plant is set to undergo construction simultaneously to the data center, with a capacity of 250 megawatts by 2027 and 1100 megawatts by December 2029. The electricity generated within would be managed by Independence Power & Light.
“[The power plant] is really lynchpinned by our design and by our desire to use the power,” Coulter said.
According to city officials, Nebius will take on day-to-day cost of electricity for the data center with no impact on customers of Independence Power & Light. Residents should not expect higher electricity bills once the center is open, according to city officials.
The center will use between 400,000 and 635,000 gallons of water per year, along with an initial 1.4 million gallons of water per 200-megawatt building on site. Coulter said Monday night that older modes of AI centers have developed a bad rap for using more water, but that the planned Nebius site would not crack the top 50 water users in the city of Independence.
Some councilmembers also expressed worry that light and sound pollution from the site would impact neighbors, along with wastewater, air pollution, drought impact and disruptions to migratory birds.
Studies on some of these factors will take place as construction continues, said Michael Lyons of HKS Architects, one of the firms working on the proposed data center.
“There is a subdivision within half a mile of this,” Councilperson Brice Stewart said Monday Night. “I just want some assurances as far as the lighting and the noise.”
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Independence Mayor Rory Rowland said Monday that he “feel[s] strong and safe” that Nebius would put forth a good-faith effort to “mitigate” potential environmental impacts along Little Blue Parkway. The city’s experience opening, closing and recommissioning power plants in the past could be an asset in managing the massive amounts of energy that the Nebius site would consume, he said.
“We have decades of that knowledge — almost a century of that knowledge,” Rowland said. “We can manage this quite well.”
While the data center could potentially be a major funding source for other city programs, some city officials also warned that residents have been burned by similar big-ticket proposals before, anticipating some disappointment if the data center does not prove a boost to local economies.
“I’ve had phone calls from folks that say, ‘What about our parks? What about our roads?” Rowland said. “I see this, over the time frame, being the opportunity to drive new energy to all of those projects — the parks, the streets …
These are big promises that you’re making to all of these citizens here, and these folks have had promises before, and some have not been kept.”
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