As more Nebraska communities pass moratoriums on new data center projects in the face of increased scrutiny from locals, the City of Kearney says it hopes to set itself apart by welcoming the industry.
The city of 33,000 has become one of the first in the state to pass a zoning ordinance for data centers, which places restrictions on things like noise, water consumption and energy use – the concerns locals cite most often when a power-hungry computer warehouse comes to town.
The city’s first customer in the wake of the new regulations will be a big one. It’s a multiphase data center campus that will rival the size of some of the biggest data centers in the country. When it’s fully built out, Tech One Crossing will consume 368 megawatts of power. That’s more than the entire Tri-Cities of Kearney, Grand Island and Hastings combined.
But it’s unclear who will make use of the Kearney campus’s computing power once it’s up and running. Developers say they have signed non-disclosure agreements and can’t publicly share who will lease the facility, and city leaders say they don’t know who the customer is.
Kearney’s regulations come as concern grows across Nebraska about the proliferation of data centers and cryptocurrency mines. In response, at least 12 counties have passed moratoriums, or time-limited bans, on new data center development.
Kearney City Manager Brenda Jensen said Kearney didn’t want to shut the door on the industry with a blanket ban.
“We’re pro-growth, pro-development, but at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we’re protecting our community,” Jensen said.
The new data center – which still needs the Kearney City Council’s approval – is set to replace an existing 100-megawatt cryptocurrency mine and is being developed by Worldwide Mission Critical, a Virginia-based project management company that has built similar facilities around the world.
The massive scope of the development – and its anonymity – leaves some Kearney residents feeling uneasy, even with the regulations in place.
Local government contractor Josh Lillyman served on the citizen advisory committee that helped shape the city’s data center ordinance.
“It’ll just be an ongoing battle to ensure that they abide by all the codes we put in place,” Lillyman said. “And that’ll be the community’s job to hold them accountable.”
Years in the making
Some in Kearney view the Tech One Crossing development as the culmination of years of industry courting finally paying off.
Craig Bennett is a consulting engineer with Miller & Associates, the Kearney-based civil engineering firm that is signed on to the project. He said the city has been after a development like this since at least 2010, when it caught wind from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development that a major company was shopping for a place to put its next data center.
Kearney saw dollar signs. For years, the city had been looking to attract a new industry to help set it apart, and it was willing to bet on data centers with the ever-growing popularity of social media and streaming platforms. The hope was that such a development would bring white-collar jobs and millions of dollars’ worth of investment to the community.
In partnership with the state, Kearney acquired roughly 112 acres of land on an isolated plot northeast of town. It was close to existing Nebraska Public Power District infrastructure, with access to the interstate and the airport. The city carved out room for data centers in its business park zoning designation, though with little to no provision for sound or water use mitigation.They hoped it would be enough to attract the unknown developer.
But another, similarly small city in Iowa also was competing for the site – and won. As it turned out, that secretive contract was for Facebook. And it went to Altoona.
“The best way I can say it is (Kearney) got second in the Super Bowl,” Bennett said. “But we made it to the Super Bowl.”
And the city has been trying to make it back to the playoffs ever since. The 112 acres were designated as a tech park, known as Tech oNE, and optioned to crypto mine and data center developers.
“So the City of Kearney has been planning for this for a long time,” Bennett said. “It may be looked at by some that the zoning regulations are new because we want a data center, but they’re just tighter restrictions on the existing zoning regulations that they have in place.”
In 2019, Kearney voted to give 11 acres of land in its tech park to Compute North, a now-defunct company, for the development of a 100-megawatt, open-air bitcoin mine that promised jobs and investment to the community. It rapidly became one of the largest sources of revenue for the city, with local tax revenue from the sale of power breaking seven figures.
Despite promised profits, Compute North declared bankruptcy a handful of years after it opened and was forced to sell its Kearney location to Generate Capital. That same year, the site changed hands again to Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that operates it today.
Now, Marathon has struck a deal with Mission Critical Worldwide to pass off its 100 megawatts of power from the bitcoin mine to Tech One Crossing. Across four years, the company plans to more than triple its electric bill, which will give Kearney a huge boost in tax revenue.
But some locals remain skeptical.
Community feedback
Earlier this year, Lillyman learned what that humming noise was that had been bothering him for so long. It was coming from a data center operating as a cryptocurrency mine just down the road from him in northeast Kearney.
“It’s pretty constant humming,” Lillyman said. “But not so bad that people have had to move out or anything like that.”
Lillyman was concerned the humming could get worse after a company announced its intentions in 2025 to develop a smaller, five-megawatt data center in Kearney’s tech park.
“They kind of had a free license to expand in ways that seemed to me potentially dangerous,” Lillyman said. “There was no specific regulation for data centers … so it could have maybe gotten out of hand if they had expanded.”
Lillyman spread the word on social media and appeared at a May 26 meeting of the Kearney City Council to push the local leaders to reshape local zoning ordinances to prepare for the data center industry.
“The deal Kearney sets as a template now will shape what shows up next,” Lillyman said at the meeting. “And what shows up next is going to be larger, more impactful and harder to negotiate from a weaker position.”
He pointed out weaknesses in the city’s codes that he felt would allow careless developers to do harm to people who live near Kearney’s tech park. There are several housing developments and a veterans home just a few thousand feet away.
To Lillyman’s surprise, the city agreed. Leaders formed a 10-person citizen advisory committee to solicit input from members of the community, including Lillyman. The committee worked with the city manager and City Planner Melissa Dougherty-O’Hara to formulate regulations that they felt would address people’s concerns about data centers.
The zoning ordinance was approved by the Planning Commission and adopted by the City Council in August. It puts a hard limit on noise at 55 decibels, measured as an average, and requires data center developers to apply for a conditional use permit that has to be approved by a majority vote of the City Council, meaning there can’t be any surprise developments. Under the new regulations, the developer is required to submit water use and wastewater studies when they apply for the permit.
“It basically punishes any data center that tries to be careless with their setup,” Lillyman said.
What’s next?
Kearney’s next big data center development isn’t quite a done deal. Worldwide Mission Critical has applied for a conditional use permit through Kearney’s new regulations and has to receive council approval before it can start construction.
If approved, the first phase of the data center is slated for completion by late 2027, according to permit documents. The site wouldn’t reach its full 368-megawatt capacity until roughly 2030, when its final phase is complete.
The city will vote on the matter at its Tuesday, Sept. 8, meeting.
