Inside a modern data center in KC
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DataBank's Lenexa location. Photos: Travis Meier/Axios
Past the fingerprint scanners and locked cages in Lenexa, rows of humming servers quietly power our digital lives — and the infrastructure behind them is expanding fast in Kansas City.
Driving the news: DataBank, a Dallas firm with 73 data centers throughout the U.S. and U.K., doubled the size of its South Lake data center to meet the growing demand for computing real estate.
- DataBank leases secure, high-power server and cloud space to companies that run banking apps, AI tools and more.
Why it matters: KC's rise as a data hub puts it at the center of a rapidly expanding digital economy, in which secrecy and security protect critical information and burgeoning technology.
- KC's "rapid growth in digital services" powers essential industries like healthcare, finance and education, Jill McCarthy, senior vice president of corporate attraction at the Kansas City Area Development Council, tells Axios.
Catch up quick: Just last month, Port KC greenlit up to $100 billion in private funding for what could be the metro's largest data infrastructure project.
- Other projects downtown and in the Northland could place Kansas City in the center of the "Silicon Prairie."
How it works: Data center companies are similar to landowners; they sell prime real estate equipped with all the hookups, allowing clients to build their virtual homes.
- Necessities like maximum security (think: guards, cameras, mantraps and biometric scanners), uninterrupted power, super-efficient cooling, redundancy and connectivity are in high demand.
- DataBank's first completed data hall in the new expansion is a stark, black-and-white 17,000-square-foot room — nearly the size of four basketball courts. And it's already sold out.
- The company declined to disclose the purchase price.
Friction point: Serious concerns over environmental issues, such as energy consumption and water use, have resulted in bipartisan pushback across the country.
- DataBank says its Lenexa location uses electricity from Evergy, which is backed up by diesel-powered generators.
- Its water-based cooling setup is a closed-loop system, meaning it rarely draws additional resources.
What they're saying: Dan Fuentes, senior vice president of enterprise sales, tells Axios that society has become reliant on digital data, and there's no going back.
- "Imagine if we said, Hey, you guys can't use the highways anymore. You can't use a plane anymore. You got to go back to sailing across the ocean."
Threat level: Fuentes says every action online, including storing and accessing hospital records and streaming shows and movies, starts and ends at a data center.
- That's why security and anonymity are so important — from bank information to government secrets, data centers house society's most vital information.
What's next: Two more data halls are under construction and set to open in six months.