Peculiar Data Center

Author: Nora Lewis

Suggested citation:

Lewis, N. (2026). Peculiar data center. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/peculiar-data-center

Peculiar Data Center

Key Takeaways

• The tech industry, which has immense economic and political power, will likely use these connections to undermine community self-determination.
• Even when communities are able to shape local infrastructure development processes, these negotiations may lead to greater distrust and division among citizens and elected officials.
• In seeking to expedite technological development, developers and city officials will prioritize development and potential economic gains, while overlooking the wellbeing of communities.

The Failed Peculiar Data Center Project

Data centers, widely embraced by technologists as crucial infrastructure for the future, are an increasingly contested piece of technology. Used to store computer systems, these structures have existed since the mid-20th century but have grown tremendously in technological capacity and distribution since these early days (Susnjara & Smalley, 2024). In the past several years, the question of how many data centers we need and where we'll put them has grown all the more fraught, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). AI requires immense amounts of computing power, more than the current fleet of data centers in the United States can handle, and with exploding interest in AI across sectors, tech companies have been left scrambling to meet demand (Chow, 2024). But industry aims are in tension with the often harmful realities of these projects, which use immense amounts of energy, water, and land. A failed data center project in the small town of Peculiar, Missouri distills these rising tensions well.

Peculiar, located about 30 miles from Kansas City, is a small community of 6,000 residents (Tan, 2024). In 2023, a large tech company (whose name was undisclosed to the general community) approached Peculiar leadership about building a 500-acre data center project adjacent to its rolling wheat fields (Tan, 2024). The center would be made up of multiple buildings, and located next to several homes and local businesses (Ledonne, 2024). When the proposed project was announced to residents in January of 2024, Peculiar's mayor promised that the new data center would bring jobs, tax revenue, and economic opportunity to the community (Tan, 2024). Yet residents were not so willing to give in just yet.

Almost immediately, community members organized a grassroots effort to halt the project. Citing concerns over its potential disruption to Peculiar's natural landscape and beloved rural charm, yard signs reading "No Hyperscale Data Centers" sprouted up around town (Ledonne, 2024). Peculiar resident Chad Buck started a Meta group of almost 1,000 people (roughly one-sixth of the town's population) in opposition to the project, stating "Big tech is preying on small communities all over this country, and they're using our loose zoning laws. Our community just feels like they're not being heard" (Ledonne, 2024).

In response to widespread opposition among residents, the mystery corporation behind the data center set up meetings with community members, sometimes even in residents' homes, to discuss concerns (Tan, 2024). But as public dissent failed to soften, the company began to limit these talks to closed-door meetings with Peculiar's mayor and town administrator, effectively abandoning any form of community outreach (Tan, 2024). Residents were unsurprisingly angered by this opaque decisionmaking, and poured into town hall meetings to express their dismay to city officials (Ledonne, 2024; Tan, 2024). But these public qualms were met with pushback from leadership who believed the data center would bring opportunity. Local officials even changed their zoning laws to accommodate the potential project, adding a "data center" definition into the town's existing light industrial zoning code (Ledonne, 2024). This decision further angered many Peculiar residents, who felt their leaders were valuing Big Tech aims over community wellbeing and autonomy.

This growing animosity between leadership and citizens is evident in near-clashes between Mayor Doug Stark and local residents in town hall meetings (Tan, 2024). Eventually, Peculiar aldermen (or elected members of Peculiar's municipal court) voted to both reverse their previous zoning decision, and reject the project altogether (Ledonne, 2024; Tan, 2024). Aldermen stated that they had been given insufficient information from city staff on data centers, and were led to believe they were akin to "software computer equipment manufacturing" sites rather than energy-intensive and water-sucking pieces of infrastructure (Ledonne, 2024). While this victory was widely celebrated by residents, the fractious negotiation process proved detrimental to community trust in elected leadership (Tan, 2024).

In a Meta post from Mayor Stark following the decision, he stated "The Alderman felt the pressure from this boisterous and ill-informed group and requested to remove data centers as an allowable use in the light industrial zoning class, essentially killing this project" (Ledonne, 2024). Chad Buck, the creator of Peculiar's anti-data center Meta page, said "It's very unfortunate that a mayor would talk to [his] citizens that way. Currently in Peculiar, I think that the trust bond with the government has been broken" (Ledonne, 2024). While Peculiar stands as an example of one community's successful vie for self-determination through grassroots organizing, this process also leaves a rift between town representatives and residents in its wake. The impacts of such distrust are likely to manifest in nebulous, but not insignificant, ways.

As similar data center battles take hold across the United States, particularly in rural communities with ample space for such infrastructure, the question arises of how well other towns will fare in these debates. Peculiar, a largely white and middle-class community, may have had better luck staving data center projects than communities of color or low-income towns will be able to (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). The tech industry's immense resources, connections, and proven opacity in public engagement processes threaten to undermine community self-determination and destabilize communities.

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

As evident from the case of a proposed data center project in Peculiar, Missouri, rural communities are often targets for resource-intensive technologies, and must organize and/or express dissent to maintain autonomy. Even when citizens are able to do this successfully, the process of organizing against a project may destabilize local political conditions and the sense of trust as a result. This remains a relevant consideration for advanced nuclear energy projects, which if expanded more broadly in a commercial sense, are likely to face community pushback. Thus, seeing an example of a community exercising autonomy/governing resource allocation, yet still being impacted negatively, speaks to the potential harms of advanced nuclear development.

Key Sources

Ledonne, I. (2024, October 21). City of Peculiar reverses zoning for data center after cries from neighbors. KSHB 41.

Tan, E. (2024, October 29). A rural Missouri town fights big tech, and itself. The New York Times.

References

Chow, A. R. (2024, June 12). How AI is fueling a boom in data centers and energy demand. TIME.

Ledonne, I. (2024, October 21). City of Peculiar reverses zoning for data center after cries from neighbors. KSHB 41.

Susnjara, S., & Smalley, I. (2024, September 4). What is a data center? IBM.

Tan, E. (2024, October 29). A rural Missouri town fights big tech, and itself. The New York Times.

U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Peculiar city, Missouri. Retrieved June 4, 2025.

Photo: Aerial view of the Google Data Center, Council Bluffs, Iowa, 2017. Chad Davis / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons