Plans are downloading for part of a gargantuan data center development in Kansas City's Northland, although stakeholders are being slippery about the prospective occupants.
A recent final plan filed with city staff for the so-called Project Velvet depicts three data center buildings and a series of supportive uses, altogether totaling 1.88 million square feet, at the southwest corner of U.S. Highway 169 and NW 128th Street.
The bulk of the project consists of three data halls, each 601,955 square feet. Also included are a transportation center, receiving and systems upgrade buildings, three guard shacks and 945 parking spaces.
The development is to be built by Velvet Tech Services LLC, which shares a Wilmington, Delaware, address and managing executive with CSC Global Financial Markets. The company provides business, legal and financial solutions for a range of other customers, including 90% of Fortune 500 corporations and more than 3,000 financial institutions, according to its website.
Companies targeting investments in "hyperscale" data centers in secondary markets, like Golden Plains Technology Park, historically have included multibillion-dollar “FAAMG” companies — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google — experts have said.
Multiple attorneys representing Velvet Tech Services did not return requests for additional information.
Project Velvet sits on about 375 acres, within the third of three data center zones in the Golden Plains Technology Park. The 882.5-acre Golden Plains Technology Park is spearheaded by Diode Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Overland Park-based Black & Veatch.
Diode Ventures and Velvet Tech Services could receive as much as $8.2 billion in incentives over 37 years, including real and personal property tax abatements and a sales tax exemption on construction materials as part of a package City Council members approved for the data center campus in April.
The amount of incentives is contingent on the development reaching its full projected scale — illustrated in preliminary plans as 16 data center buildings totaling 5.5 million square feet of construction.
The developers are to make payments in lieu of taxes totaling $841.6 million over the abatement periods, and generate a collective $2.45 billion in real and personal property tax revenue as exemptions for project phases expire over the full package term.
Project Velvet plans denote an estimated construction start in January and a completion date in December 2032.
The full Golden Plains Technology Park is expected to create 326 full-time jobs, with annual wages around $88,000, as well as an average of 1,492 construction and trades jobs over its 11-year buildout.
Members of the Kansas City Plan Commission are scheduled Sept. 7 to consider Project Velvet's final plan, plus area plan amendments recommending light industrial uses for the entirety of Golden Plains Technology Park, spanning acreage in Clay and Platte counties.
Burns & McDonnell is to provide architecture and engineering services for the data center.
