Fortune 100 Company Plans $1B Data Center in Conway

A server room in a data center. Conway has agreed to a memorandum of understanding with an unnamed Fortune 100 company to build a $1 billion, 300,000-SF data center in the city. (Shutterstock)

The Conway City Council has approved a memorandum of understanding with an unnamed Fortune 100 company to build a $1 billion, 300,000-SF data center on the city’s southwest side.

The data center would represent the largest capital investment in Conway’s history, according to Jamie Gates, executive vice president of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce/Conway Development Corp. “This project is at a historic scale for us,” he said.

The preliminary agreement, made with Forgelight Ventures LLC — an entity created to represent the company behind the project — calls for the creation of about 50 “high-quality” jobs. Gates declined to identify the company.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle are among the Fortune 100 companies investing billions in data centers to meet the computing demands of artificial intelligence, machine learning and expanded cloud services. The facilities can become drivers of economic development, serving as anchors for tech hubs, attracting additional investment and increasing demand for local services and suppliers.

Under Conway’s agreement with Forgelight, city-owned utility Conway Corp. would initially provide the data center site, located on Lollie Road, with medium-voltage power of 13.8 kilovolts and increase service to 10 megawatts of medium-voltage load. Entergy Arkansas would provide high-voltage power.

In addition to power, Conway Corp. agreed to cooperate with Forgelight on water, wastewater, sewer, fiber and other infrastructure upgrades needed to support the project. The utility’s Tupelo Bayou Wastewater Treatment Plant would supply treated cooling water for the nearby data center. Construction of a new pumping station and pipeline would be required, along with a structure for controlled release of water from a cooling tower system into the Arkansas River. Lollie Road would also need to be relocated.

How those upgrades will be financed is under negotiation, according to the memorandum.

There was no construction timeline. Gates said that local officials and economic developers began discussions with the company about a year ago and the project remains in the “very early stage.”

Though Gates could only share limited details about the project, he made one thing clear — it is not a cryptocurrency mine. Mines in Faulkner County and elsewhere in Arkansas have drawn the ire of residents due to disruptive noise levels.

Gates also shared what made Conway appealing to the company behind the project.

“The availability of power and other utilities are key drivers,” he said. “Not just affordability but actual availability. And then having real estate that can accommodate the scope and scale, the scaling up of a project over time.”

Incentives also played a role. The city agreed to support, through legislative and administrative actions, a property tax abatement of at least 65% for 30 years for the data center and any additional facilities the company builds at the site.