Why developers come here
Until mid-2025 Kansas was the missing piece in the Kansas City data center market: Missouri had a sales tax exemption and Meta and Google were building on the Missouri side of the metro. Senate Bill 98, passed in the final hours of the 2025 session, closed that gap with a 20-year state and local sales tax exemption for data centers investing at least $250 million. Within weeks a 550-acre, $12.6 billion, 600 MW campus west of the Kansas Speedway in Wyandotte County was moving through the planning commission.
The other draws are familiar: flat land at the edge of the metro, SPP power priced at about 8.26 cents per kWh for industrial customers in the first half of 2026 (EIA), and Evergy, a utility actively recruiting large loads. Evergy told regulators in early 2025 it was working with more than 20 potential large-load customers totaling more than 6 GW across its Kansas and Missouri territories, and it has announced two 705 MW gas plants in Sumner and Reno counties for 2029 and 2030.
Kansas also has a low-cost, wind-heavy grid and a state government that has consistently sided with recruitment, even as several communities have pushed back hard.
Incentives
- Qualified Data Center Sales Tax Exemption (SB 98, 2025 Session Laws Chapter 124). A 100 percent exemption from state and local sales and use tax on construction or remodeling of a qualified data center, data center equipment, eligible data center costs, and certain labor, for a period of 20 years. To qualify, a company must invest at least $250 million within five years of starting operations and create at least 20 full-time jobs for Kansas residents within two years. Applicants must sign a 10-year electricity purchase agreement with the certified retail utility for the site, adopt a water plan that emphasizes conservation and reuse, and pass a security review by the Kansas Intelligence Fusion Center. Applications go to the Kansas Department of Commerce year-round with a $1,000 fee. The exemption took effect July 1, 2025; the Commerce page lists no application deadline or sunset.
- Property tax. Kansas has no statewide data center property tax exemption. Cities and counties can abate property tax for up to 10 years through industrial revenue bonds or the constitutional economic development exemption, negotiated locally.
- 2026 session. Proposals to require closed-loop cooling and ban groundwater or municipal water for data center cooling (SB 400), and attempts to narrow or repeal SB 98, did not pass. No statewide moratorium or water reporting law was enacted, and the SB 98 exemption is intact.
Power
Kansas is in SPP. Evergy’s two Kansas utilities (Kansas Central, formerly Westar, and Kansas Metro, formerly KCP&L) serve most of the population; the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU), a municipal system, serves Kansas City, Kansas, including the Speedway-area site; cooperatives and municipals cover much of the rural west.
On November 6, 2025 the Kansas Corporation Commission approved a settlement in Docket 25-315 creating Evergy’s Large Load Power Service (LLPS) plan. It applies to new or expanded loads above 75 MW. Customers pay a minimum monthly bill equal to 80 percent of contract demand regardless of usage, commit to at least 12 years of service plus an optional five-year ramp (up to 17 years total), and owe all remaining minimum bills if they leave early. System upgrades needed solely for the new customer are assigned directly to that customer. Rates are set to cover Evergy’s incremental cost so existing customers do not subsidize the load. Signatories included KCC staff, the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, the Data Center Coalition, Google, the Sierra Club, NRDC, and several school districts.
Generation is the constraint. Evergy is building gas plants and seeking approval for solar and battery projects, and the Tonganoxie proposal now includes an on-site gas plant, which shifts air permitting to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Where the projects are
Activity is almost entirely on the western and northern edges of the Kansas City metro: Wyandotte County (the Red Wolf DCD Properties campus west of Kansas Speedway, 550 acres, 600 MW), Leavenworth County (Cloverleaf Infrastructure’s Project Bluestem, about 1,000 acres outside Tonganoxie, now proposed at up to 1.2 GW), and Johnson County, where De Soto’s economic development council backed SB 98. Evergy’s Sumner and Reno county gas plants mark where new generation will sit.
Local politics
Tonganoxie is the state’s flashpoint. Project Bluestem came to Leavenworth County commissioners in March 2025 at roughly 600 MW; by September 2026 Cloverleaf had resubmitted at up to 1.2 GW with a gas plant. A 90-day county moratorium expired in August 2026 after a 3-2 commission vote against extending it, and Citizens Against Bluestem said it planned to sue. More than 1,100 residents signed in at a September 16, 2026 special meeting, citing air emissions from the gas plant, noise and light, the site’s proximity (one to one and a half miles) to the elementary and middle schools and a nursing home, and loss of farmland; two of five commissioners did not attend and were criticized for it.
In Wyandotte County the planning commission recommended the Speedway-area rezoning 4-2 in May 2025; objections came from a neighboring property owner, a church, a resident asking for a well-contamination fund, and the Sierra Club, which wanted a renewable energy requirement. Supporters point to construction jobs, the tax base once SB 98’s 20 years run out, and the LLPS plan’s protection of other ratepayers. State leaders have not retreated from SB 98, and regional reporting in September 2026 described a widening Kansas-Missouri backlash aimed as much at lawmakers as at developers.
What a landowner should know
Developers on the Kansas City fringe have sought 500 to 1,000 acres of contiguous farmland with access to a 161 kV or 345 kV Evergy line and highway frontage. Option agreements are standard and are often signed under nondisclosure, which is a recurring source of neighbor anger; ask your lawyer what you can disclose and when.
The utility matters. Evergy customers above 75 MW fall under the LLPS plan; a site in BPU territory (Kansas City, Kansas) is under a municipal utility with its own process. SB 98 requires the developer to sign a 10-year power purchase with the certified utility for your parcel, so a site straddling territories complicates the incentive.
Zoning is county-controlled outside cities, and recent fights have turned on agricultural-to-industrial rezonings and special use permits. The state contact is the Kansas Department of Commerce, which administers the SB 98 application; utility dockets are at the Kansas Corporation Commission.