US hosting firm Patmos is to convert a former printing press in Kansas City, Missouri, into a data center.

The company this week announced plans to repurpose the former Kansas City Star printing press as the location for its new flagship data center, set to be its second in the city.

Located in Kansas City at at 1601 McGee Street, the 400,000-square-foot (37,160 sqm), five-acre campus is being transformed into a 100MW facility as part of a billion-dollar retrofit project. Patmos said it expects to have the first 5MW online next month, with a total of 40MW due online and rack-ready in 18 months.

The site will reportedly support up to 100kW a rack and utilize liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, and immersion cooling.

“The Star building that is becoming the Patmos Center will be the technological heart of the heartland. Patmos was born in Kansas City, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to establish our new hub, right here in the Silicon Prairie,” said John Johnson, founder and CEO at Patmos.

“This groundbreaking AI colocation facility combines tomorrow's densities with yesterday’s cost efficiencies. Patmos has always promised an unparalleled value to our clients through verticalized infrastructure, free speech policies, and promotion of technology that serves the human person. In these principles, we stand a fighting chance against an ever-encroaching technocracy. We are most grateful to our team, our clients, and the building’s sellers who have made this deal possible.”

BizJournal notes the printing site opened in 2006 and was sold to Ambassador Hospitality LLC for $30.1 million in 2019. The newspaper had planned to lease back the building for 15 years, but moved out and took a smaller space near Crown Center in 2022 in the wake of its parent company’s bankruptcy the year before.

Ambassador Hospitality confirmed to the publication that it still owns the building and has signed a "significant" lease term, with an option for purchase, with Patmos.

The printing press site was briefly set to be redeveloped into a baseball stadium and become the home of the Kansas City Royals. However, Jackson County voters voted against a $1.7 billion sales tax extension to fund the project in April.

“In a world where Big Tech is investing over $20 million per MW to stand up new data centers years down the road, the infrastructure already in this building allows us to build at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time,” said Joe Morgan, CIO of Patmos.

“By breathing new life into historic structures, we can create sustainable and innovative AI data centers. Repurposing these buildings not only preserves architectural heritage but also reduces the environmental impact of new construction. These revitalized spaces can become hubs of technological advancement, powering the future of AI while honoring the past.”

Patmos provides cloud, high-density compute, software, and data center solutions it claims are “free from the threat of Big Tech censorship.”

The company says it “provides refuge for the digital exile” and offers what it calls “uncancellable hosting solutions.”

Taking its name from the Greek island associated with exile, the company has a “Hosting Bill of Rights” that promises to “never cancel you for ideological reasons or external commercial pressure” and “never turn away a client who has been canceled by another company for ideological reasons.”

The company claims to have three data centers now completely occupied in Kansas City; Dallas, Texas; and Phoenix, Arizona.

It acquired Joe’s Datacenter, a Kansas City data center provider founded in 2008, in early 2023. It operated a 4MW facility at 1325 Tracy Avenue in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Built in 1990, the site was previously occupied by a glass manufacturer until it was taken over and converted to data center use by Joe’s around 2013.

Patmos acquired Codero, a Texas hosting company, last year, taking over operations at two data centers in Dallas and Phoenix.

In a blog post, CEO Johnson said: “Patmos was built on the simple principle that everybody has a right to speak regardless of political ideology. We’re building an Internet that protects freedom of speech at every level for every human. That mission is amplified by the ideological diversity of our remarkable team. We don’t host porn. We don’t host anything illegal. But any ideas are welcome here. Strangely, we love hosting opinions we don’t share. And we love working with people who think differently.”

Johnson is also co-founder of the Albertus Magnus Institute, a Christian education group, as well as Pizza Norcia, a wood-fired pizza restaurant in California dedicated to St. Benedict.