Kansas City has always been a city that builds. We built the rail lines that connected America’s heartland to the rest of the country. We built the industrial backbone that powered generations of economic growth. Today, we have another opportunity in front of us, one that could help define the next era of the Kansas City economy: digital infrastructure.
As artificial intelligence, cloud computing and advanced manufacturing drive unprecedented demand for data storage and computing power, data center development is accelerating across the region. Multiple hyperscalers have already committed billions of dollars to data center projects across the Kansas City metropolitan area, with additional large-scale campuses planned in both Missouri and Kansas.
Kansas City is not waiting to be discovered. It is already being built — and it’s being built by union labor. The question now is who benefits as this growth reshapes the Kansas City economy…