Digital Realty, which bills itself as the world's largest data center developer, wants public tax incentives to help build a sprawling new server campus in De Soto, Kansas, a city of about 6,300 residents that is already absorbing one massive data center project. The company has submitted an application for a tax increment financing district to help cover costs for the first phase of the development, though it has not disclosed how much money it's asking for.
According to the Kansas City Star, the TIF application will return for a future public hearing before the De Soto City Council, which must approve the overall project plans. The proposed data center would unfold in two phases: a first phase on 281 acres at the southeast corner of 99th Street and Lexington Avenue, and a second phase on roughly 1,155 acres at the southwest corner of Astra Parkway and 115th Street. Digital Realty plans to break ground on phase one in 2027, pending approvals, and finish construction in 2028, with phase two construction beginning in 2028 and wrapping up by 2031.
The company has purchased roughly 1,400 acres within Ad Astra Enterprise Park, according to the Star's reporting — a figure that squares with a separate report from Commercial Property Executive pegging the April 2026 purchase from Sunflower Redevelopment Group at approximately 1,440 acres for roughly $475 million. Digital Realty has not publicly identified the project's total cost, nor has it identified any tenants, though it plans to develop a nine-building data center campus and lease it to a global cloud infrastructure operator.
Massive Power Needs Behind the Project
The scale of electricity the campus would require helps explain why the incentive request matters beyond De Soto's borders. Digital Realty entered into an Energy Service Agreement with utility provider Evergy to supply 600 megawatts of power to the campus by early 2028, with capacity designed to scale up to 2 gigawatts at full buildout, per Commercial Property Executive's reporting. To offset costs, the company has pledged approximately $300 million to fund electrical transmission lines and substations, and has agreed to fund a new city-operated industrial wastewater treatment plant in De Soto, according to Ingram's Magazine.
City project filings cited by Ingram's indicate the initial Phase 1 development, known as Astra North, is projected to generate up to 1,000 peak construction jobs and approximately 250 permanent full-time operational jobs. Tax increment financing itself is an economic development tool that redirects some or all new tax revenue from a development back to reimburse costs the developer fronted, per the Star's reporting. De Soto approved a TIF district encompassing the property in 2021, the same year the city entered a predevelopment agreement with Sunflower Redevelopment to annex the land, and Sunflower Redevelopment owns property associated with that existing district.
A Site With a Toxic Past
Ad Astra Enterprise Park sits on part of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, a 9,000-acre property the U.S. Army transferred in 2005 and which De Soto later annexed in 2022. During World War II the plant produced gunpowder for artillery shells, and during the Vietnam War it produced rocket propellants — decades of activity that left the site contaminated, according to the Star. Sunflower Redevelopment has worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for years to clean up the property, which now covers more than 1,000 acres and is also home to Panasonic's electric vehicle battery plant, an anchor tenant Wikipedia notes carries a roughly $4 billion price tag.
Bob Johnson said TIF financing was essential in bringing Panasonic to the site, according to the Star's reporting — a comment that frames the current debate over whether the same tool should be extended to Digital Realty. Not everyone agrees. Sara Vandecreek said the city should stop putting developers over the community and update its ordinances, per the same report, reflecting broader frustration among De Soto residents who have opposed data center development over environmental and human health concerns.
De Soto's Second Mega-Campus
If approved, the Digital Realty project would become De Soto's second major server campus. The city is already home to Beale Infrastructure's $3 billion “Project Pilot” campus, which has expanded to nearly 2.9 million square feet across four buildings and broke ground in April 2026, according to KCUR. Digital Realty, headquartered in Austin, Texas, operates more than 300 data centers globally and has agreed to a $3.5 billion deal to acquire Blackstone's majority stakes in 288 megawatts of Northern Virginia data center assets, with the transaction expected to close June 30, 2026.
The Kansas City metropolitan area now ranks as the seventh-largest data center market in the country by IT capacity, driven by this kind of hyperscale development, per Commercial Property Executive. But not every nearby community has welcomed the trend. Data center proposals were withdrawn in Spring Hill and Gardner following resident pushback, according to the Johnson County Post. Gardner's proposed six-month moratorium motion died, while Edgerton was scheduled to consider a similar moratorium, according to the Johnson County Post. A Hoodline report on the Edgerton data center fight also mentions nearby De Soto.
The stakes extend into local politics as well. Data center siting, water consumption, power grid demand, and municipal tax incentive deals remain points of debate across the Kansas City region. For now, the size of the tax break Digital Realty is seeking remains undisclosed, and the project still awaits a public hearing and City Council approval before any shovels hit the ground.
