The annual Wright City Chamber of Commerce breakfast included updates from the Wright City R-II School District, Greater Warren County Economic Development Council and the city of Wright City as part of the featured presentation for the event.

Superintendent Dr. Amy Salvo said she is very big on branding, touting the district’s themes from the last two years “Every Student, Every Day” in 2024-2025 and “Together We Can” in 2025-2026.

“We are stronger when we work together,” Salvo said.

Salvo referenced the significant growth in the community, which she said is both a positive and a negative, with the negative being that the district’s budget is becoming more difficult to maintain. She did thank the residents of Wright City for their recent passage of an $11 million bond, which will help the district build a new gym for the high school.

She also touted the overall growth of the district and its respective schools, including in particular the addition of eight rooms at Wright City East Elementary. She said the changes will also allow the district to return Wright City Middle School to grades sixth through eighth.

Salvo said that they recently had a demographer come in to map student population changes for the respective schools and she said the district is looking good for the next 10 years.

She touted the high school’s 98.1 percent graduation rate and was excited to announce that, weather permitting, the school will have an outdoor ceremony May 21 at 7:30 p.m.

She said West Elementary recently received an award from St. Louis University’s PRiME Center for growth. An award that puts the school in the top 20 of schools throughout the state.

Those in attendance also heard from Greater Warren County Economic Development Council consultant Steve Etcher. Etcher allowed the audience to ask questions during his presentation and the primary question revolved around updates on data centers.

Etcher said that beginning in 2023 the council started looking at trends around the county and one of the primary areas of focus was the deployment of technology. Etcher said that at that time only 15 percent of everything in the cloud is housed within the U.S. with the remaining 85 percent being housed overseas. He said this led to the understanding that onshoring those resources would be a major area for growth in the future.

He said in 2024 the floodgates opened and at one point the GWCEDC had 12 data center developers looking to build in the area. Etcher noted however that the county could not support all 12 requests, specifically due to the amount of power available in the area. The two primary providers of power being Ameren and Cuivre River Electric Cooperative. He said that in 2024 Ameren committed some 2,000 megawatts of power, while the cooperatives committed 500 megawatts over the next decade.

This ultimately led to the approval of three projects along the Interstate 70 corridor, with Amazon Web Services and Google moving forward in Montgomery County, and the project being developed by Crusoe in Warren County.

He said the two projects in Montgomery County are being built now, with the Google project already enlisting 250 workers on site, with a goal of 2,500 on-site at full project build-out. Each of those projects are 1 gigawatt facilities, with the Crusoe project, which should begin building in the next couple of weeks, a 600 megawatt facility.

Etcher said one of the concerns regarding data centers has been the effect on ratepayers. He touted the provisions of SB4 which requires large-load customers like data centers having to pay a special tariff and not pass costs on to regular ratepayers. Etcher went one step further saying that data centers could ultimately save ratepayers money because of massive investments by utility companies to upgrade the entire electrical system replacing over 50-year-old infrastructure.

“We will have the most robust electrical grid along I-70,” Etcher said.

Etcher further said that water was another concern, but the Warrenton project will use a closed loop cooling system and will not be affecting the local water table.

Etcher then discussed tax incentives. He said that originally the data center industry was receiving massive tax abatements. He said the first project in Kansas City received 100-percent abatement for 30 years, with other following projects also receiving massive abatements. When projects began looking in Warren County, it was made clear that they would have to pay 100 percent of real property tax assessments, but that there would be negotiations regarding personal property abatements. The reason for this is that the components inside a data center are a quickly depreciating asset and the abatements are offered in part to incentivize the developers to refresh their equipment in a more timely fashion, in this case every three to five years.

Etcher said that while there are two potential data center projects currently advancing in Foristell, he anticipated one of those projects possibly advancing to the construction phase.

In response to a question about manufacturing, Etcher said that the industry took a nose dive over the past year due in part to tariffs. He said there has been interest in food production. He said over the last two months there has also been interest from an electrical component manufacturing company due in part to the influx of data centers. He said there has also been interest from a company that manufactures semi-conductors, but the problem has been finding the right location that checks all the boxes.

Wright City Clerk Abbie Ogborn then spoke to those in attendance about the city’s newly redesigned website set to launch soon. She said the site is designed to be not only more resident friendly, but also business friendly. The city has moved to all digital forms, which can be accessed via the new website. Ogborn said that current U.S. Census Bureau estimates place the population of Wright City at 6,300, but the city anticipates passing the 10,000 mark by 2030, with the immense growth in the city.