Two data center developers are trying to buy more than a thousand acres of land in western Sedgwick County.
KMUW reviewed dozens of county property documents. They show that Monarch Energy and NextEra Energy have spent the past several months making deals with property owners.
Monarch Energy is a San Diego-based company that originally worked in green hydrogen energy, but pivoted to developing data centers in 2024. It recently finalized a deal in Rockford, Illinois, for a $12 billion data center development.
Florida-based NextEra Energy is the largest U.S. electricity company. NextEra is building out its energy capabilities across the country after announcing a deal with Google late last year to build several hyperscale data centers.
Monarch’s CEO signed purchase and sale agreements for more than 300 acres with two Sedgwick County property owners last summer and fall. Two separate NextEra vice presidents signed option agreements with more than 10 property owners for close to 800 acres between July and January.
Option agreements give a buyer exclusive rights to buy a piece of property within a specific time frame — in NextEra’s case, three years — for an upfront fee.
NextEra is eyeing land between 311th Street West and 279th West off of 21st Street North in Garden Plain. Monarch is making deals for land between 215th West and 183rd West off of 53rd North in Colwich and Andale.
Those plats are deep in the heart of fertile farmland that’s split by the Cowskin Creek and fed by the Equus Beds aquifer.
Last week, residents from that area filled an auditorium at the K-State Research and Extension Center in Wichita for a town hall with Sedgwick County leaders.
The crowd was a sea of neon yellow, with hundreds of people wearing “no data center” shirts and buttons. The town hall on data centers lasted three hours.
“This issue is not simply about how to use the land,” Kaelib Harp told county commissioners. “It is about whether you choose a future for Kansas that can still farm, still afford water, still afford electricity, and still live on the land that their families have built for generations.”
The town hall revealed what has become a grassroots effort against data centers. This past summer, people who live in western Sedgwick County learned that someone was visiting property owners and purchasing large tracts of land.
Area residents said there are limited details on what Monarch and NextEra envision for their communities, in part because their neighbors have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements with the companies.
That’s left a lot of room for speculation and fear.
“If these hyperscale data centers are everything they are touted to be in private meetings, where’s the PR campaign?” said Garden Plain resident Craig Lubbers.
“It doesn’t take violating an NDA to tell the public that we have won the AI lottery due to the combo of their capital portfolio and our extensive local resources,” Lubbers said. “What an easy marketing opportunity. But [there’s not been] a single document in almost a year, maybe more.”
Sedgwick County officials say they don’t have details about potential projects. They haven’t received any zoning applications for data center developments.
But residents and county leaders alike are aware that there’s currently silence on this topic in county zoning rules. The Wichita-Sedgwick County unified zoning code doesn’t define the term data center or set any zoning regulations for such projects.
County commissioners decided in January to try to preempt the conversation and issue an “interim development control.” That move set up a three-month moratorium on any data center zoning applications.
Earlier this month, commissioners extended that moratorium until June 11, in order to give the Metropolitan Area Planning Department additional time to research data center regulations from other communities and draft new policies.
Last week, the county commission also issued a year-long interim development control for battery energy storage systems, or BESS. Those developments contain batteries that store electricity from the regular power grid or wind or solar farms. Some data centers use BESS as onsite power or as a backup for peak energy hours.
Residents said they are researching data centers in tandem with the city and county planning department’s work. More than 50 speakers at last week’s town hall told commissioners that they don’t like what they’re finding.
“I’m convinced, after months of researching data centers, that these facilities will destroy every facet of our way of life,” said Hollie Martin, an Andale City Council member. “[They] must be restricted from our Equus Beds aquifer areas and severely regulated, or they will cause irreparable harm to our county and our state.”
Martin and the speakers who followed her painted a picture of their fears to commissioners: of farmland tilled over to make way for massive warehouse-like buildings, of heavy construction traffic and noise to build the facilities, of a building that sucks water and energy from the local infrastructure.
It’s a future, residents say, that they fear comes with higher energy costs and the risk of soil, noise, light and air pollution.
Jake Martin, a farmer and lifelong Andale resident, addressed commissioners from a podium adorned with the 4-H clover, a symbol of the organization that has fostered generations of farmers since 1902.
"I've had several conversations with landowners that have expressed their disgust in covering up this fertile land with concrete and buildings,” Martin said.”When this technology becomes obsolete —and it will — we can't undo the damage that's been done."
Opponents of the data centers have called for an extension of the county’s moratorium. Kansas Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, who represents Andale, urged Sedgwick County commissioners late last month to enact a three-year moratorium on data center development.
Blasi said in a statement that if the county commission decided not to extend the moratorium, he would introduce legislation “to ensure the interests of our community are protected.”
Commissioner Jim Howell told residents that county leaders weren’t going to rush to make a decision about data centers, one way or another.
“We’ll take our time with this,” Howell said. “If we have to extend [the moratorium] out once or twice more, however long it takes to do this right.”
While the majority of residents applauded that sentiment, others cautioned that a moratorium could become a missed opportunity.
“Sedgwick County should be careful not to let understandable public concern and short-term political pressure produce a policy outcome that contradicts the state of Kansas' own infrastructure and economic development strategy,” said Tonya Witherspoon.
Last year, the state created a 20-year tax break to encourage data center development.
Andrew Nave, chief economic development officer for the Greater Wichita Partnership, said Wichita has about a third of the computer science and network engineering jobs a city its size should have, lagging behind Kansas City, Omaha and Tulsa.
“We need to find opportunities for the growing tech sector, for our graduates and our students in this community,” Nave said.
Another meeting on proposed zoning rules for data centers is set for 4:30 p.m. March 31 at the K-State Research and Extension Center.
