# 2026-05 City of Conway Produces Project Stratus Records On May 26, 2026 at 21:32 UTC, the City of Conway delivered its complete FOIA-2026-126 response — 303 files, ~177 MB — via the JustFOIA portal in response to [[Joshua Dunlap]]'s May 19, 2026 FOIA request on the proposed Conway data-center project. The production is the **first Tier-1 production from a City-of-Conway custodian** and confirms "Project Stratus" as the City-internal codename for the [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] data center. The cover letter from the Mayor's Office bundles the response with a broader "FOIA-2026-129" link covering "all documents related to the proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures." The City Clerk Office separately declined custodianship of Conway Corporation utility records (Item 4 of the original request), leaving those records to [[Conway Corporation]]'s still-pending rolling production. Four `PLACEHOLDER.*.pdf` file-cards in the production indicate partial withholdings without an accompanying § 25-19-105(f)(3) per-record log. ## Sources - [[city-conway/project-stratus-2026-05-26/_overview|City of Conway — Project Stratus Production (2026-05-26)]] — the production overview. - [[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter]] — the cover letter and the City Clerk's no-records letter. - The 13 source pages under `wiki/sources/city-conway/project-stratus-2026-05-26/`. - Gmail FOIA correspondence ([thread](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/19e663411e988c4d)). ## What happened [[Joshua Dunlap]] filed Arkansas FOIA Request FOIA-2026-126 with the City of Conway on May 19, 2026, in parallel with a sister FOIA to [[Conway Corporation]]. The City issued a § 25-19-105(e) time-estimate response on May 22, 2026 setting the production deadline at EOD May 26, 2026. The City delivered the production on time, at 21:32 UTC, via the JustFOIA portal. The cover letter — dated May 20, 2026, signed by "City of Conway / JustFOIA" from the Office of the Mayor — used the formal subject line **"Proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures"**, the first Tier-1 city-source explicit identification of the codename mapping. The cover bundled the response with FOIA-2026-129, an apparently broader "all documents related to the proposed Conway Data Center" request from another (unidentified) requester, by directing Joshua to the FOIA-2026-129 open public link. A separate letter from the Office of the City Clerk/Treasurer, also dated May 20, 2026, addressed Item 4 (all Conway Corporation utility records) with the statement: "the City of Conway City Clerk's Office is not the custodian of Conway Corporation records." This routes Item 4 to Conway Corporation's still-pending rolling production (per [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Interim FOIA Response]]). The 303-file production includes: - The MOU (`MOU.pdf`) and the executed April 1 special-meeting minutes; - The Stratus vesting deed for the Adams Property (Faulkner County Inst. # L202107772, 2021); - The recorded annexation Ordinance O-25-37 and rezone Ordinance O-25-39; - The April 21 Planning Commission packet and the April/May 2025 PC Reports; - The April 22 Council minutes and the May 12 2026 Council agenda; - The April 2026 staff-authored Project Stratus FAQ; - Project Stratus permits and stormwater coordination correspondence with [[EMH&T]] (the same Columbus, Ohio civil-engineering firm of record on [[The Port of Little Rock Data Center|Project Boar]]); - Internal Planning Department Microsoft Teams chats; - 226 constituent public-comment .msg files (204 unique by body fingerprint) from 76 senders. Four `PLACEHOLDER.*.pdf` file-cards mark documents expected but not produced: Property Owners (the 200-foot mailing list), Survey, Certificates of Mailing or Petitions, and Publication. These are documents that ordinarily accompany a complete rezone case file; their absence here without a § 25-19-105(f)(3) per-record withholding log is the production's most notable procedural irregularity. ## Significance This production transforms [[The Conway Data Center Project]] from a Tier-2-anchored synthesis (resting only on the publicly-archived April 1 council minutes) into a Tier-1-anchored project record. Specific Tier-1 advances: - **Site location closes.** The Adams Property at the NE corner of Lollie Rd and Donnell Ridge Rd (Section 30, T5N R14W) — the 160-acre parcel rezoned by O-25-39 — is the corpus's first Tier-1 parcel identification of the Conway project site. - **Codename confirmed.** "Project Stratus" is the City's formal internal name for the project, used across the MOU staff papers, the FAQ, the permits correspondence, and the Mayor's Office cover letter. - **The 1-gigawatt design surfaces.** The April 2026 FAQ states the site is "designed for up to 1 gigawatt of power" — matching [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review|AVAIO Project Leo]] and confirming Project Stratus as hyperscale-scale. - **The EMH&T finding.** The same Columbus, Ohio civil-engineering firm (Robert McCurnin, Mariah Anderson PE, Mackenzie Hebert) appears on Project Stratus stormwater design (from January 21, 2025) as appeared on the [[Project Boar Site Survey|Project Boar ALTA/NSPS Survey]] (certified to [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] in 2025). **This is a second Tier-1 correspondence-based shared-vendor channel between [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] (Conway) and [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] (Port of Little Rock).** Per [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]] / [[D003 Synthesis]], the wiki's standard for promoting Tier-3 attribution to Tier-1 is ~three Tier-1 channels. Conway-Willowbend now has two correspondence-based shared-vendor channels (shared counsel [[Kutak Rock LLP]] + shared engineer EMH&T) plus the registry-level shared organizer [[Michael Montfort]]. **The T003 bracketed-adjacent question on Forgelight's principal remains open**; neither shared-vendor channel by itself identifies the principal. - **No Tier-1 city-source identification of the Forgelight principal.** The MOU calls the developer "the Company" and "a US-based Fortune 100 company"; the FAQ never names it; the staff Teams chats refer to "the developer" or "Forgelight." No internal city or CDC record in the production names Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, or any other Fortune-100 entity as the Forgelight principal. The Google-attribution arguments in the constituent correspondence (Liberty Parks–forwarded Courtney Bryan op-ed) are Tier-3 inference, not city admission. Procedural observations: - **The three-reading waiver collapsed the public-comment window** at adoption ([[2025-04 Conway City Council Adopts O-25-37 O-25-38 and O-25-39]]). - **The Chamber controlled project information** through the pre-application period (per [[Conway Internal Staff Teams Chats on Project Stratus|the April 2 Ryan Robeson Teams comment]] that Planning staff did not know what the annexation was for). - **The May 12, 2026 Council declined to add Project Stratus to the agenda** despite 97 constituent agenda-inclusion demands ([[Project Stratus Public-Comment Correspondence Record]]). - **The PLACEHOLDER pattern** indicates the production withheld supporting rezone-case documents (property-owner list, survey, mailing certificates, publication notices) without providing the statutory withholding log. A Gmail reply has been drafted (not sent) requesting clarification on the PLACEHOLDER PDFs, the FOIA-2026-129 cross-reference, the missing AEDC/Governor/Entergy correspondence under Item 5, and the City Clerk Office's coordination with the City Clerk Office's "no records" finding.