Data company buys former Star building in Crossroads for AI campus
The company that brought a data center to The Star’s former home in the Crossroads just over a year ago has since purchased the building as work continues to transform it into a tech hub and AI campus for Kansas City.
Patmos, which is now headquartered in the big green glass building at 1601 McGee St., offers data services for web hosting, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other functions with an eye toward being an alternative to big tech companies.
The site was once eyed to be replaced by a new Royals stadium before Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax extension in April 2024. It used to hold Star offices and its printing press before the press operations moved to Des Moines, Iowa.
Late that year, Patmos announced that it was leasing part of the building and adding data center servers. The company has since bought the building from a firm tied to the Privitera family, founders of Mark One Electric.
And, the company announced Monday, it has received a $100 million clean energy loan through PACE Loan Group to continue the site’s development. The clean energy loan program is managed through the state of Missouri and connects development projects with sources of private funding for energy efficiency work.
The loan will be used to finance energy-efficiency, equipment, HVAC and plumbing improvements to support the data center’s cooling and electrical load, according to a news release. The data center occupies only part of the building.
Patmos’ campus is one of many data centers popping up throughout the metro on both sides of the state line. Other recent planned projects, much larger than Patmos’, include a multibillion-dollar data center complex in Clay County, one in the Hunt Midwest Business Center near Worlds of Fun, and a $12 billion data center in Wyandotte County that was stalled late last year by a protest petition and lawsuit.
Patmos founder John Johnson said in a statement about the next phase of their project that using the loan program for AI infrastructure “has never been done.”
“We are pretty far along on building out the AI campus and turning the building into a tech hub for Kansas City with co-working and event spaces, and this is going to allow us to finish that plan and that mission that we’re on,” Joe Morgan, chief operations officer for Patmos, told The Star.
Already, other tech companies have leased space in the building for their operations, and Patmos looks to create co-working spaces that can be rented out on demand. Crossroads visitors may also be familiar with the company’s security robot, Lance, that patrols the area around the building.
The company’s other plans for the building include converting the former press room into a large event space — perhaps for tech conferences or even entertainment like World Cup watch parties.
The Star left the building in 2021 as part of its parent company’s bankruptcy reorganization. The Star’s office is now in Crown Center, and printing is done in Des Moines.
During a tour of the space last year, pieces of the old printing press equipment were still in the printing pavilion area and various memorabilia from The Star’s time in the building was displayed throughout the space.
Previously, Patmos officials said they aim to preserve elements from The Star’s time in the two-block building and integrate them into the design, such as leaving up some of the old machinery and a wall of old Star headlines.
Patmos officials also say as building owners they will work closely with neighborhood residents about other ways the community can benefit from the building’s new use and how it can be incorporated into the neighborhood.