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A new Topeka data center proposal near Forbes Field is moving forward behind the scenes, despite the moratoriums. Here’s what’s on the table, and what to ask at the next two City Council meetings.
If you’ve got opinions about the Topeka data center talks and surveillance cameras in Shawnee County, the next two Tuesdays are your chance to say them where it counts.
Tuesday, Oct. 6: The cameras
The Topeka Police Department will brief the City Council on its public safety cameras: license plate readers and the Real Time Crime Center it shares with the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office. It’s discussion only, with no vote, at a listed cost of $24,000 a year from special funds.
According to TPD’s presentation, the department leases 20 stationary REKOR plate reader cameras on a contract that ends in December, owns six mobile readers mounted on patrol cars, and is drafting an agreement to access the Sheriff’s Office’s own REKOR camera data. TPD says it recently cut plate data retention to 21 days, and that all access is logged and audited.
TPD also says it has no contract with Flock, the camera company at the center of a national privacy fight. But Flock and other plate readers have been reported around Topeka, installed by police departments, homeowners associations and shopping centers, and the Kansas Highway Patrol has appeared in Flock search logs, including immigration-related searches according to the site Have I Been Flocked. KHP said it can’t speculate on third-party data and doesn’t search at ICE’s request.
Save Kansas, a local group organizing against data center development, is urging people to connect the cameras to the Topeka data center fight. Hyperscale data centers, the group argues, power the AI and surveillance technologies that camera systems like Flock rely on.
- What happens when the REKOR lease ends in December?
- Retention was cut to 21 days from what, and does that apply to the Sheriff’s cameras and the crime center?
- Who audits access, and are the results public?
- Is the data shared with state or federal agencies?
- Who owns the plate reader camera at Lake Shawnee?
Tuesday, Oct. 13: A Topeka data center at Forbes Field?
According to Save Kansas, Curtis Sneden of the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority will present to the council about a proposed data center near Forbes Field. The group says the project came up at the MTAA’s Sept. 15 meeting under the name “tech center.”
A Sept. 16 email from City Manager Robert Perez to the council confirms the talks.
“This is the first that our team is hearing of this data center development.”
Perez described a 75-to-80-megawatt facility on 30 to 40 acres outside city limits, with an application planned for spring 2027, after Shawnee County’s moratorium expires in February. MTAA officials told him it would use a closed-loop cooling system and is “not a hyperscale data center.” Perez said the city told the MTAA it won’t extend additional water service for data centers.
Sneden has been floating the idea since at least July, when he told WIBW the talks were “very preliminary” and called the prospects “modest data centers, relatively small ones, closed systems.”
“The moratoriums only mean that votes will not take place. It is clear that conversations have continued to move proposals forward regardless of the outcry from the public.”
— Save Kansas
Save Kansas also says there are five data centers in the pipeline for Shawnee County, and is asking residents to write county officials and ask them to name all five. Dystopeka has not been able to confirm that number, which is exactly why the question is worth asking.
One question worth raising: the MTAA advertises its business park next to Forbes Field as industrial land that, like the airport, isn’t subject to property tax. If a Topeka data center lands there, what does the county actually get?
The presentation isn’t on the preliminary Oct. 6 agenda. The Oct. 13 agenda posts by Thursday, Oct. 8, so check it before you go.
One more question to bring: what’s happening in Tecumseh?
A Tecumseh-area resident tells Dystopeka they recently received a notice about a proposed Evergy battery storage facility near the former Tecumseh Energy Center site east of Topeka, on land they believe is meant to be preserved. Dystopeka is working to confirm the details. Evergy has told regulators it plans new battery storage in Kansas as it expands to meet data center demand, though the projects it has named publicly so far are elsewhere in the state.
Tecumseh sits outside city limits, so this one’s for the county. If you’re contacting commissioners about the Forbes Field data center anyway, ask them too: Has Evergy applied for a battery facility in Tecumseh? What’s the zoning? When’s the hearing?
This article is connected to newer related coverage and supporting context below.
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