West Memphis, Arkansas, is in the process of luring a major data center development to the city.
BizJournal and WREG Memphis report the West Memphis City Council recently passed a non-binding resolution of intent to inform an unnamed data center company that it was interested in the project.
At the July 11 city council meeting, Ward Wimbish, general manager at West Memphis Utilities, said the $3 billion project would be built behind the Coca-Cola Company on the corner of Rainer and Bollinger Roads.
Details of the company behind the project aren’t being shared due to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The company on the approved resolution is Spark Innovations LLC, a Delaware-listed shell company.
Power would be supplied by Entergy Arkansas because the project's power needs will be beyond West Memphis Utilities' capacity to provide such power.
“They have also asked us to provide 10MW of power, which would make them a solid electrical customer,” Ward said. “The majority of water we are providing is reprocessed water from the sewage treatment plant.”
Discussions are still in the preliminary phase. The city said the unnamed company is still evaluating multiple sites, but Ward believes West Memphis is currently top of the list.
“The resolution doesn’t lock in any bonds/PILOT; it just sends a positive recommendation if/when it moves forward,” said West Memphis communications director, Nick Coulter. “While we are under a strict NDA and can’t share specific details, I can confirm that this is a very preliminary and standard step for the consultants.”
West Memphis, Crittenden County, is located on the west bank of the Mississippi River opposite Memphis, Tennessee.
Arkansas has a minimal data center market, with what few there are centered around Little Rock.
Operators across the river in Memphis include Expedient, DataBank, and EdgeConneX. Elon Musk’s xAI is reportedly building a data center for a large supercomputing cluster in the city.
