Local officials in Missouri have given the greenlight to a rezoning request that could pave the way for a new data center development.

The Joplin city council this week approved requests to annex 540 acres and rezone a total of 600 acres of land on the southwest side of the city that could be home to an AI data center in the future.

Wildwood Ranch, LLC was the applicant. The request aimed to rezone the land at the corner of West 20th Street and Central City Road from single-family residential to heavy industrial.

According to city documents, the current owner seeks to sell the subject property to a developer “interested in developing the site for heavy industrial use.”

Neither details on the planned data center or the unnamed developer were shared.

According to an online project listing by local economic development organization, the Mokan Partnership, the site could offer at least 200MW of capacity.

Joplin is a city in southwest Missouri, located close to the state borders with Kansas and Oklahoma. The city planning commission recommended approval of the annexation and rezoning requests earlier this month.

According to local press, the council meeting went on for some seven hours, with at least one person having to be removed due to disruption.

Opposition group Joplin Citizens Against Wildwood Ranch Data Center Site is seeking to have the decision repealed and install a 12-month data center moratorium.

A Change.org petition from the group against the project has gathered more than 1,400 signatures at the time of writing.

In 2009, an agreement between the City of Joplin and Wildwood Ranch was made to annex the 2,000-acre+ tract of land into the city by 2028.

Most of Missouri’s data center developments are clustered around Kansas City and St. Louis. Operators already in the state include TierPoint, H5, Netrality, Cogent, Lumen, Iron Mountain, Edged Energy, and Rackspace. Hyperscalers and neoclouds, including Amazon, Nebius, Lambda, Meta, and Google, are also present in the Show Me State.