After a nearly five-hour meeting Tuesday, the Warrenton Board of Aldermen unanimously approved the conditional use permit and site plan for the proposed data center to be located north of the Warrenton West interchange.

The decision followed lengthy public comment in which over 40 people spoke both for and against the proposal. The property will include two 805,000-square-foot buildings and one 40,000-square-foot administrative building. The site plan also includes a substation, which will be owned by Crusoe, the developer of the project, and a switch-yard, which will be the property of Ameren. The operator of the data center has yet to be announced.

The proposed conditional use permit before the board of aldermen included two specific conditions which had been previously approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission Jan. 8. Those conditions were the requirement to incorporate additional trees into the landscape plan whether by retaining existing trees or including additional trees. The second condition was to explore whether it would be feasible to reduce the color temperature of all outdoor lighting to 3,000 K or lower and whether it is feasible to reduce the height of light poles to 20 feet.

In addition to these conditions, the board of aldermen unanimously approved three additional conditions Tuesday night. One was to require a maximum of 60 dBA (A-weighted decibels) and 70 dBC (C-weighted decibels at the property line). The other was a requirement that all outside lighting on the property be dimmed by 70 percent and to only remain on for 30 seconds after activated by motion sensors. The third requirement was to move the six generators that were originally planned to be on the east and west sides of the two data center buildings (three on the east and three on the west) in the middle of the two structures.

After all of the new conditions were added to the conditional use permit the board voted unanimously, 6-0, to approve the conditional use permit.

Following the vote on the conditional use permit the board then voted by the same 6-0 tally to approve the site plan for the proposed data center. 

During the meeting board members asked representatives from Crusoe whether it would agree to the three new conditions city officials wanted to add to the CUP. At each suggestion, Crusoe Chief Real Estate Officer Matt Field agreed that Crusoe could meet the additional three conditions. 

During Tuesday’s meeting, Crusoe provided updated plans which outlined their plans to meet the first two conditions previously suggested by planning and zoning. They agreed to plant 40 more trees along the front of the property and also modified the height of their light poles from 30 feet to 20 feet, which they noted would reduce light throw by 89 percent.