Clayco CRG
Forces Data Center
Into Festus, Missouri
This page was created in partnership with Restore Festus Democracy
On March 30, 2026 the Festus City Council approved a $6 billion hyperscale data center project against immense opposition from Festus residents. A week later, on April 7th, all four incumbents on the city council who were up for re-election were voted out of office for assisting in the approval of the data center. Since then, residents have filed a lawsuit against the City of Festus and the development company Clayco CRG alleging Sunshine Law violations. A group of citizens also obtained all of the required signatures for petitions to recall three other city council members and the mayor of Festus. The petitions were certified by the County Clerk but she refuses to add the recall elections to the November ballot.
KMOV St. Louis, Festus Votes Out Four City Council Members
Festus Leader Publications, Wake Up Jeffco Sues Festus and Developer
This is what citizens of small towns must deal with when Clayco CRG comes calling and wanting to build a data center in their town. Clayco CRG’s consultants behave like foreign agents. They don’t announce themselves. Instead, they hold secret meetings with local government officials and coach them on how to use lawfare against their own citizens to undermine the democratic process and get a data center agreement approved before the citizens can create a strategy to stop it.
Bob Clark’s Agents of Lawfare
The development company that is proposing to build a data center in Festus is Clayco, Inc. and their real estate division CRG. The company is headquartered in Berkeley, Missouri, in north St. Louis County, and is led by the multi-billionaire owner Bob Clark. Bob Clark is best known for his long association with the disgraced real estate developer Paul Mckee, Jr. whom the City of St. Louis has battled with over tax credit fraud, fake inflation of property values and property neglect. Paul Mckee’s son, Chris Mckee, is Director of Lawfare at CRG, though he prefers the title of President.
After having their data center proposal rejected by the City of St. Charles, Clayco began having secret meetings with Jefferson County officials, the mayor of Festus, and Festus city council members. We know this because Sunshine Law requests turned up emails from September and October of 2025 where members of the Festus city council and county officials were discussing a data center. The emails even discussed limiting the number of participants on the email chains so as to not invoke a quorum where a public record would be required.
Once the data center project became public knowledge, the Festus city council, led by the mayor, did everything they could to move the approval process along before the citizens could rally a response. The city council used all of the tactics commonly associated with lawfare including secrecy, deception and haste. For every important meeting regarding the proposed data center, the city council waited until the very last minute to post the required notification, and they provided only as many details as required by law.
The Festus city council chambers are small and city council meetings were overflowing with residents concerned about the data center. For months, the city council ignored requests to move the meetings to a larger venue. They only moved the meetings to the local high school gymnasium for the meeting were they presented the negotiated data center proposal to the public and the next meeting where they approved the agreement.
The ultimate act of lawfare carried out by the Festus city council was approving a very flimsy data center agreement one week before the April 7th election so as to deny the residents of Festus any opportunity to vote on the proposed data center. This is what Bob Clark and Clayco CRG’s agents of lawfare brought to Festus. They did nothing less than encourage the Festus city council to subvert the democratic process.
lawfare: Ameren Corporation
lawfare: Derrick Good
Bob Clark’s Agents of Propaganda
When the citizens of Festus voted out the four incumbent city council members, many national news outlets covered the story as well as Tucker Carlson and the Wall Street Journal. In response, Bob Clark, CEO of Clayco and CRG, held an invite only press conference where he spoke and answered questions about the Festus data center. In the video (linked Below), Bob makes a number of inaccurate or simply untrue statements.
He says that opponents of data centers are uninformed and accuses them of being funded by outside groups. He claims that data centers are quieter than industrial warehouse buildings. He even claims that people living next to data centers should see their property values go up due to the economic growth of the entire locality. In the question answer session, Bob says that he doesn’t think that the City of Festus can terminate the data center agreement. We at Restore Festus Democracy have determined that even a fifth grader could easily locate the section titled Termination in the sparse data center document.
At one point in Bob’s press conference, you can see him literally clutching his pearls as he talks about how he found the opposition to his data center at the Festus High School gymnasium to be “shocking”. Bob Clark doesn’t seem to be able to reflect on how it might feel to have democracy subverted before your very eyes, nor can he understand the disgust people are feeling after watching his press conference and seeing an entitled billionaire telling the people of Festus how they should grow their community.
Bob Clark has a large army of pro-data center advocates working to get the Festus data center approved, and, as you might expect, most of these people work for the government in one way or another. The entire county government and all of the City of Festus government are solidly pro-data center with the exception of three of the four new Festus city council members.
President Trump declared data centers to be crucial for U.S. competition against China. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe and his pro-data center administration are touting the economic benefits a $15 billion Google project and $10 billion Amazon project in Montgomery county, Missouri. We at Restore Festus Democracy have yet to find one pro-data center individual who actually wants one in their back yard.
Bob Clark also states in his press conference that he will not force a data center into Festus if it is found that the community doesn’t want one, but that is exactly what he and his agents of lawfare are doing right now.
Clayco CRG Burdens Communities With Risk While Assuming None Themselves
Many families chose to build their dream home in unincorporated Jefferson County, and they paid tens of thousands of dollars to have their wells drilled. Now, these families have had their homes annexed into the City of Festus, and plans are in action to build a hyperscale data center in their neighborhood. According to the agreement signed by Bob Clark and the City of Festus, Clayco CRG will be allowed to drill two wells on the site of the data center much deeper than the resident’s wells because it is crucial, in the world of corporate hooliganism, that the data center never run out of water.
One only has to search the internet for a few minutes to see the common experiences of communities with hyperscale data centers. The shear amount of water and electricity consumed by one of these facilities is enough to make a person pause when they encounter the numbers. Hyperscale data centers can often consume one and a half to twice the water and power of the entire community that hosts them. People don’t want to see their utilities bills go up or the quality of their services threatened, and this is a concern for nearly everyone of all economic levels.
Clayco actually assumes minimal risk in proposing a data center project since the entire project is funded by private equity investors. They line up investors, who assume all of the risk, and Clayco gets paid to build the data center whether the project succeeds or fails, regardless of whether they find an end user. It is the small communities who Clayco CRG targets with their team of lawyers and consultants who assume all of the risk of a hyperscale data center.
Right now, the stock market is experiencing a bubble in technology stocks driven by the AI data center buildout. If that bubble were to pop, the people of Festus could very well wake up to an empty building that was supposed to be a data center but now must be repurposed. This is a big risk for the people of Festus, but not for Clayco CRG or Bob Clark. Should the data center project fail, Clayco CRG will just get paid more money to repurpose the building.
Bob Clark Is A Tool of A Foreign Influence Campaign
On the surface, Bob Clark may seem like your typical corporate goon, but when you dig into the details of his operation, some disturbing facts emerge. Bob Clark has, multiple times, signed a document containing this clause, the inclusion of which is required by Missouri law for many contracts.
Anti-Boycott. Pursuant to Section 34.600 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri, Developer certifies it is not currently engaged in and will not, for the duration of this Agreement, engage in a boycott of goods or services from (a) the State of Israel, (b) companies doing business in or with the State of Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of the State of Israel, or (c) persons or entities doing business in the State of Israel.
According to this clause, there is nothing that the State of Israel could do that would cause Bob Clark to boycott, divest from, or sanction that country. No amount of murder, ethnic cleansing or land stealing could cause Bob to open his mouth or do anything that could be construed as criticism of Israel. Imagine being worth 3.7 billion dollars and still being a slave to a foreign influence operation and having bend your knee and sign a piece of paper showing your allegiance.
Bob Clarkâs Israel-First credentials are no joke. He is a big Democrat supporter and a supporter of the Congressional campaign of Wesley Bell whose biggest campaign donor is AIPAC. Bell has recieved $18 million dollars from that foreign influence campaign.
Bob Clark Is Deeply Concerned About His Legacy
Bob Clark spends a lot of time thinking about Bob Clark. He has his own website which you can view at bobclarkbeyond.com. He even has a contact page.
Bob paid for a Library to be built in Ladue called the Clark Family Branch. We at Restore Festus Democracy reached out to the Clark Family Branch regarding their participation in the Bob Clark legacy and received no answer.
Bob has made himself a member of the Ellis Island Honors Society, which is a website for people who need a reputational fluffing. The society recently updated their website and made the individual bios inaccessible after Restore Festus Democracy sent them a letter regarding the activities of Robert Clark.
We at Restore Festus Democracy are committed to making Bob Clark’s legacy be The Man Who Tried To Force A Data Center Into Festus, Missouri. No matter what happens with the data center going forward, if the electricity rates sky rocket and the water pressure drops and the local aquifer is made toxic, or if all of Bob’s investors pull out of the project and Festus is left with an empty eyesore of a building, the people of Festus will know exactly who to blame. It will be the infamous agent of lawfare, Bob Clark.
Help Festus Residents Defeat Bob Clark and Clayco CRG
Support the legal effort against the City of Festus and Clayco CRG.
Visit Wake Up Jeffco and donate to the cause.
Talk to them at: info@wakeupjeffco.org
Encourage the Jefferson County Clerk, Jeannie Goff, to add the recall elections to the November ballot for the petitions that she certified.
Talk to members of the Festus city council, and tell them to reject the data center.
Contact Clayco, CRG or Bob Clark and ask them to build an industrial-scale, toxic box in your backyard before the AI boom collapses.
The Ultimate Defeat of the Proposed Festus Data Center
If the data center agreement between Clayco CRG and Festus is not terminated by some other means and Bob Clark and Clayco CRG continue to try to force a data center into Festus, then the data center agreement will ultimately be terminated in April of 2027. On the first Tuesday of April, 2027, mayor Sam Richards and three council members will be defeated in the local election. At the next city council meeting following the election, the data center agreement will be terminated with malice, and Clayco CRG’s private equity investors are going to have a bad day. This claim is supported by the fact that 25% of the voting public signed petitions (now certified) calling for the removal of the mayor, Sam Richards, and the three council members.
Agents of Corporate Greed
Ameren Corporation: Bob Clark claims in his video that folks from Ameren would regularly meet with people from Clayco CRG to help target communities for Clayco CRG’s lawyers and consultants. It seems that the citizens of Festus have had their own utility company working against them. Ameren is building the Big Hollow Energy Center to power the Festus data center, and a new Missouri Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) law will allow Ameren to force its customers to fund the construction of the power plant before it ever goes online. The Festus data center will more than double the load needed in the area, and it is Ameren’s customers who are going to pay for the buildout of energy generation while Ameren’s (NYSE:AEE) stock price goes up and up.
Derrick Good: Clayco CRG hired the Thurman Law Firm to facilitate the annexation and rezoning of the land where the data center is to be built, and their lawyers helped negotiate the agreement itself with the City of Festus. Derrick Good works at the Thurman Law Firm, and he is also President of the Jefferson County Port Authority which has now been tasked with overseeing the tax abatement for a $6 billion dollar data center agreement which his own law firm helped to negotiate. Couple this conflict of interest with the well documented and complete lack of transparency by the Port Authority and you can understand why the citizens of Festus are wary of the project.
Jeanie Goff: As Jefferson County Clerk, Jeanie Goff oversaw the validation and certification of recall petitions filed against the mayor of Festus and three city council members. Despite the fact that her office certified the petitions as valid and despite the effort that it took to do so and despite the work done by dozens of Festus citizens to collect the signatures of 25% of the voting public, she refuses to add the recall elections to the November ballot. This is how lawfare works. Elected officials simply refuse do their job which is to execute the law, and then they are not held accountable for their failure.