Nebius Independence campus Approved
Nebius' first gigawatt-scale US campus: ~2.5M sq ft on 398 acres near Route 78 and Little Blue Parkway, powered by a privately financed plant at the retired Blue Valley Power Plant site. Council approved Chapter 100 abatement 5-2 and the company has broken ground.
Key facts
- Operator
- Nebius
- Owner
- Nebius
- Size
- 800 MW
- Acres
- 398
- Location
- Independence, Missouri
- First proposed
- 2025-12-16
- Decided
- 2026-03-02
- Stage today
- Approved
Source
read 2026-08-23
What to do next
Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.
What has happened so far (4 events)
- 2025-12-16announcement
Nebius, a Dutch AI infrastructure company, was revealed as the buyer of 398 acres near NorthPoint's EastGate Commerce Center, proposing an 8-to-10-building campus that would roughly triple Independence's power capacity. · source - 2026-02-27hearing
Independence weighed a Chapter 100 tax abatement for the hyperscale campus, with residents raising concerns about electricity costs and the scale of the commitment ahead of the council vote. · source - 2026-03-02vote
Independence City Council approved the Chapter 100 tax abatement 5-2, alongside two series of taxable industrial development revenue bonds for the project. · source - 2026-03-02utility
The city set out a power structure under which Independence Power Partners builds a privately financed generating facility at the retired Blue Valley Power Plant, delivering an initial 200 MW and 600 MW more at full operation plus 300 MW reserve, with the city taking on no debt. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Missouri DNR — Air Pollution Control ProgramThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search Missouri DNR — Air Pollution Control Program for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Independence planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Independence property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Missouri Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 39.090, -94.420 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Recent news
11 stories tracked since 2026-06-25 across 5 outlets. 3× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. 3× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. Most recent: “Judge could order Nebius to halt data center construction in Independence” (FOX4KC.com, 2026-10-07).
- Judge could order Nebius to halt data center construction in Independence
- Independence delays vote on new data center rules as residents demand more oversight
- Independence voters have now ousted 3 of 5 councilmembers who backed data center funding
- Residents report permit violations with Independence data center construction
- Residents report permit violations with Independence data center construction
- Lost sleep, NDAs & closed meetings: Inside lawsuit seeking to halt Independence data center
- New lawsuit attempting to stop multi-billion data center project in Independence
- Independence neighbors sue to stop construction of $150 billion AI data center
- Lawsuit aims to block construction of Independence data center
- Lawsuit aims to block construction of Independence data center
- After massive data center upends city politics, Independence considers a ban
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 11 headlines archived.
Around here
- Independence community briefing — Enactedexpires 2027-01-02
- Missouri briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Missouri
- Google Kansas City East — Kansas City, 5 mi Under construction
- Wildwood Ranch data center — Joplin (Jasper County), 139 mi Approved
- Amazon Montgomery County Data Center — Montgomery County, 157 mi Under construction
- Midtown Data Center — St. Louis (Midtown), 228 mi Approved
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Nebius Independence campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/nebius-independence-mo, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).