CRG, the St. Louis-based data center development arm of Clayco, is proposing a 600MW hyperscale campus on roughly 360 acres in Festus, Jefferson County, Missouri. The project was first reported by Leader Publications (My Leader Paper) and is tracked by SUE Data Centers and SAVRN.

The Festus City Council voted 6-2 on March 30, 2026, to approve a development agreement for the campus. A follow-on vote of 5-2 on August 24, 2026, annexed three additional parcels totaling about 6.55 acres, bringing the full site under city jurisdiction. The project carries a permitted status in public trackers, though no building permit or construction plan had been submitted to the city as of June 12, 2026.

CRG's model for this project is developer-led: CRG will build the campus and subsequently hand operations to a tenant operator. No operating tenant has been named in public records.

CRG is the data center development arm of Clayco, a full-service real estate, architecture, engineering, and construction firm headquartered in St. Louis. The structure means CRG can self-perform significant portions of the development process, from design through construction, before transferring the asset to an operator. That vertical integration is a meaningful factor in how the Festus campus will be staffed and sequenced.

Ameren's power study is the critical near-term variable. A 600MW campus requires a purpose-built or heavily upgraded interconnection, and the timeline from study completion to energization on a project of this scale typically runs several years. The absence of a disclosed interconnection agreement means the construction schedule remains contingent on Ameren's findings. For workforce planners, this is the clock to watch: substation and transmission crews will need to be lined up well ahead of the first building shell.

The project faces active legal opposition. Citizen group Wake Up JeffCo and several property owners filed a Sunshine Law suit in early April 2026 seeking to void both the rezoning and the development agreement. The suit argues that procedural requirements were not met during the approval process. As of mid-2026, that litigation remains pending, meaning the project's land-use and contractual status is not fully settled despite the council votes. The 6-2 and 5-2 approval margins suggest council support is real but not unanimous, and the annexation step drew its own dissent.

A 600MW campus built in phases across 360 acres is among the largest single construction commitments the Jefferson County labor market has ever been asked to absorb. The St. Louis metro has deep union building-trades capacity across electrical, ironwork, carpentry, and operating engineers, built over decades of heavy industrial and manufacturing work along the Mississippi River corridor. That base is well-suited to the substation, civil, and structural phases of a hyperscale build.

The complication is timing and competition. Other large Missouri data center and industrial projects are drawing from the same pool of electricians, HVAC technicians, and civil trades, and peak phases will overlap. More specifically to Festus, CRG's developer-then-operator model, combined with the ongoing Sunshine Law litigation, creates genuine uncertainty about when mobilization begins. Trades that commit early to other regional projects may not be available when Festus finally breaks ground. The practical implication is that general contractors and specialty subcontractors who want a position on this campus should be building those relationships now, not after a permit is pulled.

For a full breakdown of roles, pay bands, and where the qualified talent sits, see our guide to hiring data center talent in Jefferson County, Missouri. Sources: Leader Publications (My Leader Paper), which first reported on the project's community engagement, with additional tracking data from SUE Data Centers and SAVRN.