GO Topeka Data Center Land: The Conflict of Interest, Confirmed

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SEO Title: GO Topeka Data Center Land: What We Could Verify Slug: /go-topeka-owns-data-center-land-conflict-of-interest Meta description: A breakdown of the GO Topeka data center land at the center of the Compass Datacenters fight in Shawnee County, and what we could verify about the claims circulating around it.

GO Topeka Data Center Land: What We Could Verify

A local advocacy group is raising new questions about GO Topeka’s role in the Compass Datacenters project — and about who, exactly, stands to benefit if it goes through.

Protect Kansas, a group opposing the proposed data center campus in the Wakarusa area southwest of Topeka, posted this week that GO Topeka — the economic development arm of the Greater Topeka Partnership — owns 40 acres within the footprint of the site Compass Datacenters wants to build on. The group also claims the land was purchased in 2012 for $402,500, that it wasn’t listed on GO Topeka’s public site-development page, and that GO Topeka’s board chairman is also the CEO of Bartlett & West — the engineering firm handling due diligence for the Compass project. Protect Kansas called that last point a potential “conflict of interest.”

We looked into what we could verify independently about the GO Topeka data center land before running any of it as settled fact.

What checks out

Bartlett & West’s role in the project is real and confirmed. A company spokesperson told KSNT directly that Bartlett & West is “providing surveying, technical due diligence and support for the Conditional Use Permit application” for Compass Datacenters, including guidance on local regulations, utility coordination, infrastructure requirements, stormwater analysis and community impacts.

JEDO’s funding structure matches the claim. The Joint Economic Development Organization (JEDO) is funded by Shawnee County’s countywide half-cent retailers sales tax, and JEDO contracts with GO Topeka — a private nonprofit, not a government agency — to administer the economic development spending that tax generates. That structure is confirmed on GO Topeka’s own site and in prior local reporting.

What we couldn’t verify

We don’t have direct access to Shawnee County property records, so we still can’t independently confirm the specific $402,500 purchase price or the 2012 purchase date for the land — Protect Kansas told us directly they saw that figure circulating in comments but couldn’t verify it themselves either, which is why they left it out of their own posts. We’re treating it the same way: unconfirmed, not reported as fact. (See the correction below on the $5,000,000 JEDO funding figure, which we can now substantiate considerably better than when this piece first ran.)

CORRECTION: Joe Caldwell Is GO Topeka’s Board Chair — We Were Wrong

An earlier version of this piece stated that GO Topeka’s board chair was Neal Spencer, not anyone from Bartlett & West, based on the Greater Topeka Partnership’s published board roster. That correction was itself wrong, and we’re fixing it here rather than quietly editing it away.

Protect Kansas provided us with GO Topeka’s 2026 Information Report filed with the Kansas Secretary of State — a legal filing, not a website — dated June 9, 2026. It lists the corporation’s officers as follows: Chair – Joe Caldwell, Chair Elect – Kevin Hahn, Immediate Past Chair – Neal Spencer, Treasurer – Travis Morris. In other words, Spencer is the former chair; Caldwell, Bartlett & West’s current CEO, holds the position now. Protect Kansas also points to video from a recent JEDO meeting in which a GO Topeka speaker introduces Caldwell as the board’s Chair, with Caldwell seated in the room at the time.

We should have caught this. The Greater Topeka Partnership’s own public website is, per Protect Kansas’s message to us, out of date on this point — which is a reminder that a nonprofit’s own site isn’t automatically more current than its state filings. Between a website and a signed state filing, the filing wins.

So the original claim stands corrected in the other direction: the CEO of Bartlett & West — the same firm serving as civil engineer on Compass Datacenters’ application — is the current, sitting Chair of GO Topeka’s Board of Directors. That is a direct, first-degree overlap, not the more attenuated board-of-the-parent-organization connection we described previously. It’s a conflict of interest under any reasonable definition of the term, and it’s a more serious one than we initially reported.

The $5 Million Funding Claim Is Backed by an Actual Contract

Protect Kansas also shared JEDO Contract No. C-2017-01, the “Agreement for Services” between JEDO and GO Topeka. It states plainly: “For each of the calendar years 2018, 2019, and 2020, the JEDO agrees to grant at least Five Million Dollars ($5,000,000.00) from its economic development fund to GO Topeka for the purpose of providing economic development services.” That contract’s stated term runs through 2020, and we have not yet seen a signed renewal document for the years since — Protect Kansas says the arrangement is understood to continue on a similar basis and points to GO Topeka’s 2025 audit, which shows the organization still receiving half-cent sales tax revenue at a comparable scale, and to JEDO’s own posted budget documents. That’s not the same as a signed current-year contract, but between the original agreement, the audited revenue figures, and JEDO’s public budget materials, the $5 million figure is substantially more supported than “unverified” at this point.

The GO Topeka data center land: ownership structure matters more than “GO Topeka owns it”

Protect Kansas’s fuller post makes a sharper claim than a simple headline of “GO Topeka owns 40 acres” suggests. According to the group, GO Topeka — as a private nonprofit — cannot actually hold assets outside of JEDO. Their claim is that the land is titled in JEDO’s name, not GO Topeka’s: Shawnee County taxpayers funded the purchase through the half-cent sales tax, and JEDO — the public interlocal body, not the private nonprofit — is the actual property owner of record, with GO Topeka simply administering it. Protect Kansas also states that JEDO has not approved a sale of that land to Compass Datacenters, and is calling on the public to pressure JEDO to block GO Topeka from transferring it.

We can’t independently confirm the deed language without pulling the actual Shawnee County Register of Deeds record, which we haven’t yet accessed. But this framing is worth taking seriously regardless of the deed specifics: JEDO’s funding is unambiguously public tax revenue, and if the land in question traces back to that half-cent sales tax — whoever technically holds title — the underlying question Protect Kansas is raising is a legitimate one: does the public get a say before land bought with public money changes hands for a private data center project? That’s a JEDO board meeting question as much as a records question, and it’s one worth watching regardless of exactly whose name is on the deed.

One complication worth being upfront about: GO Topeka’s 2026 Kansas Secretary of State filing — the same document that corrected the board-chair record above — lists multiple parcels of land in Shawnee County under a section asking “Owned by corporation?”, and answers “Y” for each one, totaling 247 acres owned outright, with 138 of those acres leased out to named individuals. That’s GO Topeka’s own sworn state filing describing the land as its own corporate property, not JEDO’s. We don’t yet know whether the specific parcels listed in that filing are the same acreage inside the Compass Datacenters footprint — the filing lists parcels by section/township/range rather than by project name, and we haven’t cross-referenced them against the Wakarusa-area site — so this isn’t a final answer on the JEDO-versus-GO-Topeka title question either way. But it’s a real document that cuts against the “JEDO holds title” claim rather than supporting it, and we’re flagging it for that reason rather than only surfacing documents that support one side.

The bigger picture

This lands in the middle of an already tense fight. Shawnee County commissioners approved a six-month moratorium on data centers in August after Compass Datacenters’ initial application was ruled incomplete and then resubmitted. Compass has said the project would bring roughly 650 jobs and tens of millions in annual economic impact; residents near the proposed site have raised concerns about water use, noise, and how little advance notice they got before the process started moving. We covered the broader timeline of that fight — including questions about zoning changes predating any formal application — in an earlier piece.

Protect Kansas is also urging supporters to contact JEDO directly and press the board to block any transfer of the land to Compass Datacenters, alongside circulating a Topeka Chamber of Commerce survey on 2027 legislative priorities for residents opposed to data center development to weigh in on before it closes. The group also noted that both Monday’s Shawnee County Planning Commission meeting and the Monday-morning County Commission meeting were cancelled this week.

We’ll keep digging on the property records and update this piece if we get solid documentation either way.

Update, [9/14/26]: This piece was updated after Protect Kansas provided GO Topeka’s 2026 Kansas Secretary of State filing, JEDO Contract No. C-2017-01, and video from a recent JEDO meeting — correcting our earlier statement on GO Topeka’s board chair and substantiating the $5 million JEDO funding figure. We appreciate the group sending primary documents rather than just disputing the piece, and we’re glad to run corrections in both directions as better sourcing comes in.

UPDATE: A City Official Connected a Resident to Compass’s PR Team — and We’ve Seen the Email

Protect Kansas has since shared documentation that moves one part of this story from “claim” to “confirmed.” A resident who submitted public comment on the Compass Datacenters project says he received an unsolicited call from Leigha Boling, listed in the email’s signature as the City of Topeka’s Economic Development Director. According to the resident, the call was on behalf of Compass Datacenters — specifically to connect him with Janise Murphy, Compass’s Principal of Corporate Communications, so she could address questions he’d raised in public comment.

We’ve seen a copy of the actual email. It’s dated September 3, 2026, sent from a topeka.org address, and copies two other city staffers, including the city’s procurement manager — the email notes the outreach is tied to an active city solicitation involving the project. The email supplies Murphy’s direct contact information and links to both Compass’s own project FAQ page and the city’s public RFP documentation.

The resident’s reply, also documented, declines the offer of a private call. He cites Mayor Mike Duncan’s own remarks at an August 19 special council meeting, in which Duncan reportedly told Compass representatives: “If you want to come into this community and be a part of it, you have got to have these conversations with the people that live here. It’s critical, it is imperative and it is essential.” The resident asked instead for open public sessions with city and county officials and regional media present, rather than a one-on-one call.

Compass’s written response, also shared with us, frames its current approach as a “standing offer” to talk, notes the company has already held five sessions in Topeka, and says it has posted answers to previously asked questions on its project page.

Whatever position you take on the project itself, the underlying fact here is no longer in dispute: a City of Topeka economic development official personally facilitated contact between a private citizen and a private corporation’s PR representative, on that corporation’s behalf, using a city email account. Protect Kansas’s read on that — “our tax money paid for that phone call” — is a fair characterization of what the documentation shows, whatever conclusion you draw from it.

GO Topeka Data Center Land: Parcel Breakdown and the JEDO Meeting

Parcel map circulated by Protect Kansas showing the GO Topeka data center land (yellow) within the larger proposed Compass Datacenters site (gray).

Protect Kansas has also circulated a parcel map breaking down ownership of the roughly 607-acre proposed site: about 40 acres (roughly 7% of the total) is attributed to “Growth Organization of Topeka Shawnee County Inc” — GO Topeka’s full legal name — with the remainder attributed to an entity listed as Cantrill & Co. We’re citing this as the advocacy group’s own graphic, not an independent GIS pull, and would treat exact acreage and ownership splits as pending confirmation against county parcel records.

The group also promoted a JEDO board meeting, held in City Council chambers, with public comment accepted by email before 5 p.m. the day of the meeting. JEDO’s board is made up of the Shawnee County Commissioners and the Topeka Mayor and City Council, and per Protect Kansas, meets only quarterly — which the group framed as a reason that particular meeting mattered. That meeting has already taken place as of this writing, and we don’t yet know the outcome — whether the land transfer came up, what public comment was submitted, or what JEDO decided, if anything. We’ll update this piece once we can confirm what happened.

A National Parallel Worth Watching

Protect Kansas also pointed to reporting out of Arkansas as a cautionary comparison. The Arkansas Times reported that public records requests revealed Google will reportedly cover only roughly a third of the cost of a 600-megawatt solar facility tied to its Arkansas data center buildout, raising questions about utility Entergy Arkansas’s public assurances that the tech company — not existing ratepayers — would bear the full cost of the power needed for its data centers. It’s a different state and a different utility, but the underlying question is the same one Protect Kansas is raising here: who actually ends up paying for the infrastructure a data center needs, on paper versus in practice.

Related: We Know Where Your Water Is Going: Inside the Shawnee County Data Center Fight

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