The Conway City Council approved entering into an agreement with Forge Light Ventures for the construction and economic development of a data center campus at its special meeting April 1. 

“This has been a very, very long project that we’ve worked on and so this is a big step forward for the community,” Brad Lacy, Conway Chamber of Commerce president, said. “It is much larger in scope, in size and impact than what we are accustomed to seeing.”

While an NDA restricted Lacy from revealing the name of the company, he said it is a U.S.-based company ranked within the Fortune 100. 

Lacy said the data center will go through five phases of build-out and will offer “hundreds of full-time high-quality, permanent jobs.”

The site itself will be a 300,000-square-foot data-support building with ancillary support buildings making up the wider campus. 

Lacy said the company anticipates the cost of constructing and equipping the site will be approximately $1 billion, with 50 high-quality jobs included in the first phase. 

Approval for the data center is a three-step process, Lacy said, as the city council, Conway Corp and Conway Foundation would all have to approve the agreement.

The Conway Foundation is a charitable organization that accepts donations from corporate sponsors which are then put into community development. 

“If you approve this, it’s really an important step forward in the overall development process for this site,” Lacy said. “They’ll continue to advance work on entitlements and site prep and off-site infrastructure alongside us and Conway Corp.”

“It is a massive construction project,” Lacy said. “These things could last somewhere between five and eight years to fully build out that site. So, there’s certainly an economic impact associated with the construction site even before the facility opens full-time.” 

Lacy emphasized the employment opportunities the site would create and how much revenue could be brought to Conway with the site’s construction. 

“The company is one that we would be happy to have as a corporate partner,” Lacy said. “We have really enjoyed working with them.”

Lacy also said the company will use local contractors during the site’s construction and expansion. 

Part of the city’s role in the agreement is granting the company a 65% property tax abatement for thirty years. 

Lacy said the reduction percentage and length of time are both standard for city-corporate agreements. 

Over the life of the agreement, Lacy said the maximum capital investment could be up to $60 billion, with $10 billion coming from real property and $50 billion from personal property. 

“I can tell you in the almost 30 years I’ve been in this business, I have never seen anything close to that,” Lacy said. “It was rare to find a $1 billion project and now with the proliferation of some of these data centers, you’re seeing bigger numbers.”

Chamber of Commerce Vice President Jamie Gates told the council the company will use greywater to cool its machinery. 

Gates said the chamber is currently working with a third-party company to come up with a proper charging rate. 

“They’re going to do that by looking at the real cost associated with the future operations to determine what a fair rate is,” Gates said. 

Greywater is clean wastewater that comes from appliances such as sinks or washing machines. 

Conway Corp Chief Executive Officer Bret Carroll said supplying the greywater for company use would be the first occurrence of that nature in Arkansas. 

“The reason we feel so good about from the very beginning is that we know water is a precious commodity for us and so from the very beginning, we said ‘The only way that something like this would work here is if you could use greywater for cooling’ and they immediately said they were comfortable with that,” Lacy said.

Gates also confirmed the company will use medium voltage supplied by Conway Corp and will pay the standard franchise fee. 

“This is not something that is going to exhaust Conway’s local power supply or our ability to attract future manufacturers,” Gates said. 

The council voted unanimously in favor of the agreement. All members were in attendance. 

The next city council meeting is scheduled April 8.