The ‘developer’ of a Kansas data center swore under oath he wasn’t involved. My town is bamboozled.

Organizers of a petition to put a proposed data center for Emporia to a public vote gather signatures on July 13, 2026, outside the city offices. (Photo by Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)

The sales pitch for what could be the state’s largest data center is built on a hyperscale whopper.

In sworn testimony from a federal bankruptcy proceeding, Gary Pinkston, the businessman touted as the developer of the proposed “Flint Hills Digital Campus” at Emporia, said he wasn’t familiar with the project.

Come again?

“I have no interest at all in that project,” Pinkston said under oath last month in reply to a question about the Emporia data center.

Pinkston has been the folksy plaid-shirt-and-jeans ambassador for the hyperscale project since shortly after its announcement last month. The scheme aims to transform 1,000 mostly rural acres on the west edge of Emporia into a data center complex that might eventually attract billions of dollars in investment. Mentally stress “might” in that sentence, because not enough information in the project has been released to judge its chances of success.

The debate over the data center proposal has been fierce in Emporia, mirroring arguments in Kansas and across the rest of the country. A coalition composed of unlikely demographics — the young and the old, the rich and the not so rich, tree huggers and Bible thumpers — has emerged to fight the data center, with yard signs and petitions and passionate testimony at public hearings. Those in favor of the data center, led by pooh-bahs at the local chamber of commerce and the local regional development association, have crowed about jobs, progress and an enlarged tax base.

All of this has unfolded in my town, most of it within walking distance of my home on Constitution Street. The rift has strained or broken friendships, prompted passionate discussion in bars and restaurants, caused distrust among some and brought others together. It has revealed the frustration that the average citizen feels as they are buffeted by decisions that are moving too fast and are beyond their control. Mostly, the data center debate has ignited a conversation about who deserves the public’s trust.

The score thus far: A day after the data center was announced, the Emporia City Commission unanimously annexed the designated acreage into the city. The opposition had one petition to force a public vote bounced by the county clerk on a technicality, but a new petition has been submitted. The local planning commission recommended, 6-1, to include the rezoned land in the new “digital infrastructure overlay” zone, after hours of public hearings in which sentiment was so hostile that many turned their chairs around when Garrett Nordstrom, representing the proposal, approached the microphone to address the planning commission.

The next step is a July 22 meeting in which the city commission will consider the recommendations for rezoning and creating the digital infrastructure zone. The commission was scheduled to vote July 15, but that was scrubbed so city staff and commissioners could attend a two-day educational “summit” in Topeka, hosted by Kansas Municipal Utilities, about data centers and energy use. Protesters attended the summit as well, or at least they demonstrated outside the Docking State Office Building, as KMU declared the event off-limits to anybody but paid attendees. It would have cost a member of the press or public $295 to attend, a KMU official told me.

In most appeals on behalf of the data center, the town pooh-bahs — a term derived from a pompous character in Gilbert and Sullivan — cite the economic benefits and bemoan “misinformation” circulating among the resistance. I’ve lambasted civic leaders before, including in a column last year about Emporia being the new unemployment capital of Kansas. But this twist in the data center story, in which the man promoted as being the developer of the proposed data center swore he was not the developer, takes the cake.

Where is the due diligence?

Shouldn’t the local chamber, the city staff, city commissioners or those on the planning commission have noted the red flag that Pinkston had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and followed up on it? The local planning commission, a seven-member volunteer board, has taken months to deal with a zoning variance for a drive-through coffee stand near the local Walmart. But it took a week after the first public hearing for the commission to recommend approval — in the face of heavy public opposition — of the data center requests.

Nordstrom, the spokesman for Pinkston and the data center, deflected questions about the bankruptcy filings. Instead of focusing on the bankruptcy, Nordstrom said, the public should ask instead whether the data center project demonstrated the financial, technical, and other requirements needed for success.

But the fact that Pinkston’s creditors were asking about the data center as part of the bankruptcy proceeding — and that Pinkston told a substantially different story than the one made for public consumption — should validate the public’s concerns.

Nordstrom did not reply to requests for comment on Pinkston’s bankruptcy testimony, sent via both email and voice message. Brad Kraft, the vice president of the Regional Development Association of East Central Kansas and a vocal advocate for the data center, also did not respond to email and phone message requests for comment.

At 84, Pinkston has spent most of his career as a real estate developer in California and Hawaii, but he grew up on a ranch in nearby Chase County. In a media campaign aimed at winning over local residents, an image has been heavily featured of Pinkston in cowboy hat and rumpled blue shirt posing on a horse against a suspiciously generic rural background. Pinkston has been portrayed as a savvy businessman who came back home to help bring growth and jobs to the community.

But when he’s allowed to speak for himself — as he did on local radio June 19 — the folksy demeanor drops and he engages in the kind of fearmongering once heard from the likes of John Birchers.

“If you folks would like to learn Chinese to watch Netflix, just stick around,” Pinkston said of those opposed to the data center plan.

AI is used for everything now, he said, from video streaming to billing for the local hamburger shop.

“If you want all of that run out of China, just keep pushing back,” he said.

The implication is clear: If you oppose the data center, then you’re a godless communist who hates America. You may also hate horses, cowboy hats and plaid shirts.

During the segment, which aired on Emporia’s KVOE radio, Pinkston said data centers are like business centers: “It just has machines instead of people.”

He said he expected his bankruptcy to be “wrapped up” within 60 days. As the “master developer” for the project, Pinkston said, he would be involved at every level of decision making, had already engaged in discussions about water and power supplies, and was already fielding inquiries from potential end users.

But when questioned under oath just four days later during a proceeding in connection with his bankruptcy, he disavowed any interest in the project.

What follows is the exchange between Pinkston and Keith M. Lusby, the attorney representing Hydra BV and Meridian Pacific Holdings, during a 341 Meeting of Creditors Proceeding, from an audio recording made by the Office of the U.S. Trustee in Atlanta. I obtained the audio through an open records request. Lusby is attending the meeting remotely.

Lusby: “Mr. Pinkston, can you tell me a little bit about a company known as Flint Hills Digital Campus LLC?”

Pinkston: “I’m sorry?”

Lusby: “Are you familiar with a company called Flint Hills Digital Campus?”

Pinkston: “No.”

A gravid pause follows.

Lusby: “Ah, related to a campus project in Emporia, Kansas, a data center?”

Pinkston: “My daughters are working on a data center in Kansas.”

Lusby: “You have no interest in that project at all?”

Pinkston: “I have no interest at all in that project.”

Pinkston also denied a relationship with Kanza Park Place LLC, the business entity registered in Kansas for the data center project. He said his daughters “owned” that limited liability company. Pinkston said he was receiving no compensation of any kind from the Emporia project.

A few minutes later in the proceeding, Lusby came back around to the data center, after apparently pulling up the Flint Hills Digital Campus website on his computer. He then mentioned the open letter to the community.

Lusby: “Is this something you authored?”

Pinkston said he had no idea what Lusby was looking at, then added that his children owned Kanza Park Place, and that he was helping them with no compensation. Lusby then read the first two sentences of the message, purportedly from Pinkston, which identify him as the developer.

Lusby: “Is that something that you wrote?”

Pinkston: “No, I did not write that.”

Lusby: “Then somebody forged it, on your behalf?”

Pinkston: “I can’t answer that, I’m sorry.”

A 431 meeting is held so that creditors can ask questions of the debtor and the bankruptcy filings to date, and the exchange between Lusby and Pinkston took place during an hour-long session of a proceeding that took several days. Pinkston has filed for personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and similar protection for more than a dozen LLCs he either owned or managed, so the cases have been combined into one massive Dickensian legal affair.

To trace the labyrinth of connections among Pinkston’s companies would require a team of auditors. What’s significant is that all the cases were filed May 14, less than three weeks before the public announcement of the Emporia data center project.

Pinkston said during the creditors meeting that he filed the bankruptcies because he was the victim of a “predatory” lending scheme to wrest control of his condominium project in Hawaii. He often seemed confused about the worth of his holdings or how many other assets he had. An attorney representing the IRS said during the meeting that Pinkston still owed money from 2012 and had not yet filed his 2023 income taxes.

To this point, Pinkston’s daughters have not been publicly identified as owners of the data center or otherwise connected with the project. They are, however, listed in court filings as sharing 98% ownership in TC Clovis, an LLC registered in Delaware that Pinkston manages, and that is associated with the Chapter 11 bankruptcies. Pinkston owns the remaining 2%. They also own various smaller interests in other associated trusts and LLCs.

Crystal Pinkston lives in Hawaii and Tiffany Myers (formerly Pinkston) lives in California, according to court records. Gary Pinkston’s residential address is listed as Tiburon, in Marin County, California.

At the upcoming meeting of the city commission, officials should ask Nordstrom just who the hell really owns Kanza Park Place LLC. What has been presented to the public thus far appears to be a lie, based on Pinkston’s bankruptcy testimony. If Pinkston didn’t write that letter to his “neighbors” in the Flint Hills, who did? Why did Pinkston tell a local radio audience that he was the “master developer” of the project, in charge of all decisions, when he contradicted himself in the creditor’s meeting?

The other day I talked with a member of the planning commission who justified their vote to recommend approval because, they said, otherwise the city would be at risk of a lawsuit. That is, simply put, nonsense. While people can sue for a variety of reasons or no reason at all, planning commissions are under no obligation to recommend action that might result in harm to the character or the quality of life of a community. The data center proposal is a poor fit for a small rural community that has long considered itself the “front porch” to the Flint Hills, and whose premiere tourist event is the summer Unbound Gravel bicycle race. There is a very real need to consider the soul of a community when contemplating the seismic cultural shifts that would be caused by a hyperscale data center.

The economic development system is broken.

That a proposed data center could progress with such speed through the slow and deliberate machinery of municipal government is alarming. That the proposal could advance while the true owners and developers, whoever they may be, are shielded by the secrecy of limited liability companies is outrageous.

To fix things, the public must insist on greater transparency in the economic development process. Groups such as the Regional Development Association need to be reformed to serve the public, instead of catering to power and influence. Ownership structures of LLCs asking for public support should be clearly understood, and that information shared with the public, before any project advances. That would require a change in the way LLCs are registered under Kansas law, to require more than just the name of the registered agent, but it would be a change for the better. I couldn’t get a permit to replace my roof without identifying myself. Why should the rich be allowed to hide behind shell companies?

Planning commissions should use wider discretion when making recommendations, weighing a community’s character and the quality of life in their deliberations, and they should take public opposition seriously.

But none of this will happen.

The system is built to reward money and influence, and nothing is likely to change as long as wealth is prized over humanity. But every so often we get a glimpse behind the curtain, and we are rightly appalled.

Jay Vehige, an Emporia activist who is among the principal organizers of the resistance to the data center, told me he was distressed by Pinkston’s bankruptcy revelations.

“Working families, farmers and neighbors across Emporia and the great Lyon County region are seeing one red flag after another with bankrupt Gary Pinkston,” Vehige said. “It’s becoming harder to understand why our city leaders seem so reluctant to slow down or stop this process and demand complete transparency.”

It’s time for city officials to demand Pinkston and Nordstrom come clean about what’s really going on. If there’s a reasonable explanation for the whopper that Pinkston was the developer, then let’s hear it,

The public deserves the truth.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.