Construction has started on Warrenton’s new data center, and developer Crusoe plans to announce the end user of the facility next month, according to a company representative.

“We have a lot going on at the site right now,” Bobby Spoonster, community liaison for Crusoe, said at the Tuesday, Oct. 6 Warrenton Board of Aldermen meeting.

Construction has begun for both of the two main buildings that will be part of the data center, Spoonster said. He added that people driving by the site, located north of the North Service Road at the West Warrenton Boulevard exit off of Interstate 70, have likely seen cranes set up.

“We started putting steel up on (Sept. 21). Our underground utility construction is going to be ongoing, and it probably will be ongoing into early 2027,” he said.

Grading work has been completed for the first building, and Crusoe hopes to have concrete foundation work completed by the end of the year, Spoonster said, while grading work for the second building will likely continue until around this time next year.

Asphalt and paving work has started for laydown areas to store construction materials, he added.

“The trailers and offices are being moved over onto the back side of the property, where there will be like a trailer city where all the offices will be over there,” Spoonster said, adding that he expected that to be complete by mid-October.

Prior to Spoonster giving his scheduled update on the project, earlier during the Oct. 6 Board of Aldermen meeting, resident Jess Sutton asked during public comment who the end user of the Crusoe data center would be, a question later reiterated by Alderman Christine Wait.

“We are hoping to make an announcement once all parties have signed off on everything. We’re hoping to do that by mid-November. That’s the hope. I cannot confirm or deny who the end user is at the moment, but that is what the hope and the plan is,” Spoonster said.

“All the legislators and everybody have seen the framework for the announcement, it’s just getting everybody signed off and making sure everything is worded correctly on the legal side of things.”

Wait asked if the end user was the same one that Crusoe “started with, that they had a former relationship with,” and Spoonster said it was.

Bloomberg News reported in June that Crusoe had reached an agreement with tech giant Meta Platforms Inc., which operates social media services Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for use of the Warrenton data center.

Work is ongoing on retention ponds on the northeastern side of the data center property, Spoonster said.

“We are obviously happy with the weather we’ve had so far. It’s been conducive for us to get a lot of things done in a short period of time,” he said.

Laura Schaefer, who lives next door on the east side of the property, however, spoke during public comment to voice concerns about the construction, including that Crusoe has not properly contained stormwater runoff from the project, which has gone into a pond on her property.

Crusoe has yet to remediate damage it caused to her property in the spring, when “a lot of debris was washed into my lake,” Schaefer said. 

“Luckily we haven’t had any bad weather for the last few months, so I don’t know if it’s still going on or not until that happens,” she added.

“They have offered to pour in chemicals to settle the silt, but it could also kill all my fish,” Schaefer said, so she declined that offer. She got her own bid for what it would cost to fix the issues with her pond, “which would be to drain it, to dig it out, and have it refilled,” she said, and she passed that bid along to Crusoe and the city, but has not heard back.

Spoonster said Crusoe has been in touch with Schaefer and that he has personally “been out to her house probably five times,” although Schaefer disputed that it had been that many.

Crusoe is reviewing an offer that Schaefer recently sent for resolving the issues on her property, Spoonster said, although he added that her last communication with him had been a group text message that also went to several other phone numbers he was unfamiliar with.

“We’re just not going to respond to text messages with a bunch of numbers on there that we don’t know who those numbers are,” he said.

Schaefer brought up other issues, saying Crusoe took down her fence and knocked down trees onto her property. While the trees were eventually removed, the fence was never repaired, she said. She also mentioned that noise has been a problem.

Asked about noise at the construction site later in the meeting by Alderman Roger Romaker, Spoonster said there is only so much Crusoe can do to mitigate the issue.

“I mean, obviously construction equipment’s going to be loud and noisy,” he said, adding, however, that Crusoe could look into alternating construction shifts.

In response to questions from aldermen, Spoonster, along with concerned neighbors, clarified that construction has been starting at 6 a.m., rather than at 7 a.m., as some aldermen believed.

In addition to answering questions from aldermen and addressing issues raised by members of the public, Spoonster noted that Crusoe will partner with nonprofit Feeding On Faith to host a free Thanksgiving meal for members of the community in need.

The meals will be served at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, and Crusoe employees will also deliver them, Spoonster said.

“We just want to make sure everybody’s aware of that,” he said. “We want to get out there early and do what we can to help some folks out this winter.”