As St. Louis weighs the promises and risks of a $3 billion data center project in Midtown, the St. Louis branch of the NAACP is urging city leaders to ensure Black communities do not bear the costs of the region’s artificial-intelligence boom without sharing in its benefits.
The civil rights organization recently released a Community Benefit Framework calling for stronger protections, greater transparency and enforceable investments in neighborhoods that could be affected by the rapid expansion of data centers and AI infrastructure.
The report arrives amid one of the most contentious development debates in recent city history: the proposed Armory Innovation District. The project would transform the historic Armory building into office and innovation space while constructing a large data center on adjacent former Macy’s-Famous-Barr warehouse property.
The debate has exposed sharply different visions of what data centers mean for St. Louis. Supporters view them as engines of economic growth capable of generating jobs, tax revenue and investment. Critics worry about electricity demand, water consumption, environmental impacts and whether nearby neighborhoods will receive meaningful long-term benefits.
The NAACP argues that Black communities should not be asked to choose between economic development and environmental protection.
“That is a false choice,” the report states. “The better framework is rights-based development: if data centers want access to St. Louis land, utilities, and public legitimacy, they must protect health, respect community participation, and create enforceable public value.”
National NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said communities should not be left to absorb the costs of technological growth without protections.
“Communities should not be forced to absorb the environmental and economic costs of technological growth without safeguards or consent, and innovation must not come at the expense of clean air, clean water, or affordable utilities,” Johnson said.
The St. Louis report argues that those concerns are especially important in African American neighborhoods that have historically experienced disproportionate environmental burdens while receiving fewer long-term benefits from major development projects.
“For St. Louis, this principle is especially important for African American communities that have historically borne disproportionate environmental burdens while receiving too little of the long-term wealth, ownership, and infrastructure value produced by major development projects,” the report states.
According to project documents, developers are seeking no local tax abatements or incentives and project the development will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenue over its first decade. The proposal also includes commitments to create more than 1,000 union construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions.
The project is also subject to a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement requiring environmental reporting, water-efficiency measures and other safeguards. Project documents also commit approximately $15.75 million to a city-directed community benefits fund supporting digital-access initiatives, infrastructure improvements and environmental-justice programs.
The project’s approval followed months of public hearings and neighborhood opposition focused on energy use, water consumption and whether the promised economic benefits justified the scale of the development.
Alderwomen Alisha Sonnier and Anne Schweitzer recently sought to prohibit mega-scale data centers citywide.
“We’re talking about an unregulated industry that has grown in a way that I don’t think we would have wanted it to, based on the intensity of use and the drain on our resources,” Schweitzer said during Planning Commission discussions.
Commissioners ultimately rejected the proposed ban and instead advanced regulations allowing data centers under strict conditions.
The organization argues that communities should have access to independent expertise when evaluating major projects and should receive detailed information about energy demand, water consumption and environmental impacts before approvals are granted. It also advocates for oversight structures that would monitor compliance with community-benefit commitments.
“Applied to St. Louis, this means the central question is not whether AI will exist, but whether the Black communities of St. Louis will simply absorb externalities for a digital economy owned elsewhere or instead become protected, compensated, trained, connected, and included participants in that economy,” the report states.
The proposal urges the city to require economic-impact reporting, support apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, expand digital-access initiatives and invest in broadband access, technology training and business development in Black communities.
The report concludes with a warning that St. Louis should not allow technological growth to repeat patterns that have left some neighborhoods carrying the costs of development while receiving few of its rewards.
“St. Louis therefore should adopt a clear rule: ‘No data center without community protection, no community protection without enforceable terms, and no use of Black neighborhoods as sacrifice zones for someone else’s digital economy.’”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.