Liberty city officials voted on Monday to approve $1.4 billion in bonds and more than $229 million in tax abatements for a nearly 600,000-square-foot hyperscale data center coming to the area.
The City Council previously approved the project at 2525 Old Hughes Rd. back in December.
“The City of Liberty is excited to partner with Metrobloks to bring the most significant digital economy project in Liberty’s history,” Liberty Mayor Greg Canuteson said in a statement. “We believe this is the first step in building a high tech foundation to our city’s economy going forward.”
The Metrobloks project is just one of several large data centers moving to the Northland in recent years, joining two hyperscale Google data centers being built near Smithville and a Meta data center that opened in August. Another hyperscale data center is planned in Independence, as well. Many of these projects also received large tax incentives.
For the Metroblok project, the total $1.4 billion bond investment is broken down into real and personal property, according to Brandon Smith, the economic development director in Liberty. The real property amount will fall around $543 million, and the personal property amount will be about $858 million. The bonds will be paid for by Metrobloks.
The project also includes a 25-year tax breaks that will cover both real and personal property taxes: 75% real property tax abatement for 25 years, and 100% personal property tax abatement for five years and 90% for an additional 20 years, Smith said. The abatements will total around $202.7 million, in addition to a $26.5 million sales tax exemption.
Even with the significant tax breaks, area taxing jurisdictions, including Liberty School District, Liberty Hospital District, Metropolitan Community College and Clay County Senior Services, are expected to receive nearly $49 million in revenue over 25 years because of the data center – a drastic increase from the $33,728 they would receive without the development, according to Smith.
“So it’s obviously a substantial increase from what we see there today to what we will get in the future,” he said.
The project is expected to bring around 30 jobs to Liberty with an average annual wage of $95,649 and hundreds of construction jobs while the facility is being built, according to the city.
Maggie Duffin, a native of Liberty, expressed concerns regarding the city giving large tax abatements to a private corporation. She also worried how the data center will impact utility bills and whether it will create noise and light pollution for the surrounding neighborhoods.
“It sounds all nice and fine and dandy, but at the end of the day, it just doesn’t seem like a good cost benefit analysis for us citizens of Liberty,” she said.
But Smith said Metrobloks plans to utilize a “closed loop system,” meaning they will fill up the data center’s cooling tank once, similar to a swimming pool, and continue to recirculate the water.
“This project would use 85% less water, roughly, than what an office building would use,” Smith said.
Jason Klindt, who works for Evergy and lives in Kearney, said the data center is also expected to have a positive impact on energy rates for customers and will likely “drive down the fixed costs for everyone.”
“So as long as this project isn’t causing me to build generation, it is going to be a net positive for customers in our service territory,” he said.
Additionally, Canuteson said the data center will likely have a low impact on the surrounding neighborhoods in terms of light and noise since it will be built in an already industrial part of town. The data center will be built near the Ford Stamping Plant and Amazon Fulfillment Center.
“I think that over the life of this, we’re going to have a great benefit from it. So that’s why we approved it before, and that’s why we’re going to approve the tax abatements. We really do think that it’s going to be a really big benefit to the community,” he said.