QTS Cedar Rapids Data Center Campus Approved
QTS (a Blackstone portfolio company) is building a seven-building campus on 612 acres of Alliant Energy's Big Cedar Industrial Center; the Cedar Rapids City Council approved the development agreement with QTS Cedar Rapids LLC on 2025-01-28 with a minimum $750M investment, later announced by QTS as a $10B campus. The agreement includes up to $18M over 20 years to a Community Betterment Fund, tax increment financing rebates, and water-free cooling; the development agreement requires construction to begin within three years and finish within six.
Key facts
- Operator
- QTS Data Centers
- Owner
- Blackstone
- Filing LLC
- QTS Cedar Rapids LLC
- Size
- 612 ac
- Location
- Cedar Rapids (Linn County), Iowa
- First proposed
- 2025-02-12
- Decided
- 2025-01-28
- Stage today
- Approved
Source
read 2026-08-14
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 (3 events)
- 2025-01-28vote
Cedar Rapids City Council approved a development agreement with QTS Cedar Rapids LLC for a minimum $750 million data center on 612 acres of the Big Cedar Industrial Center. · source - 2025-02-12announcement
The City of Cedar Rapids, Alliant Energy and QTS announced the data center campus, described by the mayor as the largest economic development investment in the city's history. · source - 2025-08-08announcement
QTS announced the Cedar Rapids campus as a $10 billion, seven-building development with water-free cooling and carbon-free energy sourcing in partnership with Alliant Energy. · 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.
- Iowa DNR — Air Quality BureauThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Iowa DNR document searchSearchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Cedar Rapids (Linn County) 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 Cedar Rapids (Linn County) 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.
- Iowa Utilities 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 41.980, -91.670 — 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.
Around here
- Linn County community briefing — Enactedexpires 2028-01-01
- Iowa briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Iowa
- Google Cedar Rapids — Cedar Rapids, 4 mi In review
- Microsoft Project Osmium — West Des Moines, 114 mi Under construction
- Google Council Bluffs (East) — Council Bluffs, 223 mi
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “QTS Cedar Rapids Data Center Campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/qts-cedar-rapids-ia, 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).