# City of Conway — Project Stratus Production (2026-05-26) The City of Conway's complete FOIA-2026-126 response — delivered 2026-05-26 21:32 UTC via the City's JustFOIA portal in a single ~303-file ZIP, ~177 MB raw. The production is the corpus's **first Tier-1 production from a City-of-Conway custodian** and gives [[The Conway Data Center Project]] its first Tier-1 evidentiary base. The records confirm that the City refers to the [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] data-center project internally as "Project Stratus" (a confirmation made explicit in the City Mayor's Office cover letter [[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter|LET_RESPONSE_2026-129]], which references "the proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures"). The production includes the executed MOU, the annexation and rezoning ordinances and case file, the staff-authored April 2026 public-facing FAQ, internal Teams chats and email between [[City of Conway]] staff and the [[Conway Development Corporation]] / [[Conway Area Chamber of Commerce]] economic-development team, the underlying vesting deed naming **John William Adams** as the landowner-applicant on the rezone case, and approximately 226 constituent public-comment emails from at least 76 unique senders. ## What's inside - [[Project Stratus MOU and April 1 Special Council Meeting]] — the trade-secret-stamped MOU, the executed April 1 2025 Special Council Meeting minutes, the April 1 2025 Special Council Meeting agenda, and Jamie Gates's [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence]] memo to council. The corpus's first Tier-1 anchor for the MOU. - [[Stratus Vesting Deed (Adams)]] — the 2021 Fiduciary's Deed (Faulkner County Inst. # L202107772) that vested the rezone applicant John William Adams's title in the 160-acre Section 30 T5N R14W parcel that O-25-39 rezones from A-1 to I-3. The corpus's first Tier-1 parcel anchor for the Conway project. - [[Annexation Ordinance O-25-37 (Lollie Rd)]] — Ordinance O-25-37 annexing 296.21 acres east of Lollie Rd into the City of Conway, paired with the related O-25-38 (39.50 acres). Recorded Faulkner County 2025-05-12 Inst. # L202506520. - [[Rezone Ordinance O-25-39 and REZ-0425-0052]] — Ordinance O-25-39 rezoning two parcels at the NE corner of Lollie Rd and Donnell Ridge Rd from A-1 (agricultural) to I-3 (heavy industrial), paired with the rezone-case file REZ-0425-0052 (cover letter, certificate of mailing, draft annexation/rezoning request packet, and the Conway Development Corporation case-file PDF). Recorded Faulkner County 2025-05-12 Inst. # L202506522. - [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus]] — the staff-authored 43-question public-facing FAQ, dated April 2026. Discloses the **1-gigawatt build-out design**, the 5 million GPD treated-wastewater supply, the Act 9 bond / 65% property tax abatement for 30 years, and ~300+ permanent jobs. - [[Project Stratus Permits Sequencing and Stormwater]] — internal staff correspondence on permit timelines, the Stratus permitting decision-matrix spreadsheet preparation, and the [[EMH&T]]-led stormwater design coordination. Reveals EMH&T as Project Stratus's site-civil engineer (the same Columbus, Ohio firm of record on [[Project Boar Site Survey|Project Boar]]). - [[Conway Internal Staff Teams Chats on Project Stratus]] — Teams chat exports and internal-email portfolios documenting staff handling of the project from April 2025 through August 2025, including Lauren Hoffman's draft data-center ordinance, Planning staff coordination, and the Conway Development Corporation–city interface. - [[Conway Planning Commission Reports April and May 2025]] — the April 21 2025 PC meeting agenda and packet, the April and May 2025 PC Reports, and the staff-routed New PLAN Case Submission for REZ-0425-0052. - [[Conway City Council Agendas and Minutes on Project Stratus]] — chronological collection of council agendas and minutes touching the project: Special Council Agenda July 25 2023, Council Agenda Sept 26 2023 (background; the 2023 Data Center Noise Ordinance O-23-55), April 22 2025 agenda + executed minutes (O-25-37, O-25-38, O-25-39 votes), and the City Council Committee Meeting record (May 12 2026 agenda). - [[Project Stratus Public Notice Sign Proofs and Locations]] — the required notice-sign proofs and location map for the rezone hearing, plus the Energov internal-communication record on sign mechanics. - [[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter]] — production-process record: the Mayor's Office FOIA-2026-129 cover letter (dated 2026-05-20, signed for "City of Conway / JustFOIA," using the "Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures" naming explicitly); the City Clerk Office's 2026-05-20 no-records letter declining Item 4 (Conway Corporation records) as outside the Clerk's custodianship; the FOIA-2026-118 confirmation that surfaced in this production. - [[Project Stratus Public-Comment Correspondence Record]] — 226 Outlook .msg files (204 unique by body fingerprint) from 76 unique constituents addressed to council members and the City Clerk. Themes (in order of volume): water-use opposition (104), agenda-inclusion demands (97), noise concerns (55), AI-framing opposition (40), public-comment / hearing requests (36), press-contact requests (32), rezone-specific opposition (30), tax-incentive opposition (21), corporate-identification arguments (16), electoral threats / "voted out" (14), petition references (9). Inventory CSV at `extracted/city-conway/project-stratus-2026-05-26/public-comment-inventory.csv`. ## Provenance Filed by [[Joshua Dunlap]] on 2026-05-19 with the City of Conway via the City's JustFOIA portal as Request FOIA-2026-126 ([request thread](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/19e41be6d2204d32)). The City issued a § 25-19-105(e) time-estimate response on 2026-05-22 (deadline EOD 2026-05-26). The production was delivered 2026-05-26 21:32 UTC via the City's JustFOIA portal as a 176 MB ZIP at the original-portal URL. The cover letter — `LET_RESPONSE_2026-129.pdf`, signed "City of Conway / JustFOIA" from the Office of the Mayor, dated 2026-05-20 — explicitly bundles this FOIA-2026-126 response with the broader FOIA-2026-129 "all documents related to the proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures" request (an open public link via the JustFOIA portal). A separate City Clerk Office "no-records" letter (dated 2026-05-20) handles Item 4 (Conway Corporation utility records) by declining custodianship — those records remain with [[Conway Corporation]] per its 2026-05-22 [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Interim FOIA Response|interim response]], pending the promised rolling production. The six request items map to the production as follows: - **Item 1** (developer correspondence) — partial. The Stratus permits and stormwater correspondence (the [[EMH&T]] / [[Conway Development Corporation]] threads) is responsive; correspondence directly with [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] / [[Michael Montfort]] does not appear in the production. - **Item 2** (City Council agendas, minutes, votes, ordinances) — substantially complete. April 1 2025 special-meeting minutes and MOU, April 22 2025 regular-meeting minutes, the O-25-37 / O-25-38 / O-25-39 ordinances, and the May 12 2026 agenda are all here. - **Item 3** (Planning and Zoning records) — substantially complete. April 21 2025 PC meeting packet, April / May 2025 PC Reports, REZ-0425-0052 case file. The four **PLACEHOLDER**.{Property Owners, Survey, Certificates of Mailing or Petitions, Publication} cards were clarified by City Clerk [[Denise Hurd]] on 2026-05-29 as Planning **working-document stubs superseded by the produced final agenda**, not § 25-19-105(f)(3) withholdings — see [[2026-05 Conway City Clerk Clarification on FOIA-2026-126]]. - **Item 4** (Conway Corporation utility records) — declined by City Clerk Office as outside custodianship; routed to Conway Corporation, whose [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Interim FOIA Response|interim response]]'s promised rolling production was **delivered 2026-05-29** (26 records) — see [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Produces Project Stratus Records]]. - **Item 5** (inter-agency correspondence with AEDC, Governor's Office, developer) — no direct AEDC or Governor's Office correspondence appears in the production. This is a documentary gap — the Project Stratus correspondence with Entergy referenced in the FAQ ("The company was working with [[Entergy Arkansas]] on finding suitable sites in the state") does not appear here. - **Item 6** (PILOT, MOU, host-community instruments) — substantially complete via the MOU and the April 1 minutes; the Act 9 industrial-revenue bond paperwork itself is not in this production (the FAQ says the IRB process is downstream of the MOU and not yet executed). ## Key takeaways - **"Project Stratus" is the City-internal codename** for the Forgelight Ventures Conway data center. Confirmed across the MOU staff documents, the [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ]], the [[Project Stratus Permits Sequencing and Stormwater|permits and stormwater correspondence]], and — explicitly — the [[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter|Mayor's Office cover letter for FOIA-2026-129]] which equates "Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures." The Stratus name first appears in the corpus on 2025-01-21 (the [[Project Stratus Permits Sequencing and Stormwater|EMH&T stormwater call]] — earliest dated Stratus reference in the production). - **The site is now parcel-located** at the NE corner of Lollie Road and Donnell Ridge Road, Faulkner County. The rezoned property is the N½ and S½ NE¼ of Section 30, Township 5 North, Range 14 West — 160 acres acquired by John William Adams from the Estate of O'Deal L. Adams in 2021 (Faulkner County Inst. # L202107772). The site is in the same Lollie Road area that the MOU contemplated relocating; the adjacent sections (19 and 20) were newly annexed by O-25-37 as part of the project footprint, with [[Conway Development Corporation]] holding adjacent parcels and [[Conway Corporation]] holding a small carved-out parcel within the rezone area. - **The site design is for up to 1 gigawatt of power** per the City's own FAQ — the first city-source acknowledgment that Project Stratus matches the [[The Port of Little Rock Data Center|Project Boar]] and [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review|AVAIO Project Leo]] hyperscale category in capacity terms. Conway Corporation's 13.8 kV service represents only 10 MW (~1%); the balance comes via Entergy Arkansas 230 kV+. Cooling-water supply is 5 million GPD of treated effluent from the Tupelo Bayou Wastewater Treatment Plant. - **[[EMH&T]] is Project Stratus's site-civil engineer of record**, alongside its established role on [[Project Boar Site Survey|Project Boar]]. The [[Project Stratus Permits Sequencing and Stormwater|stormwater call email]] of 2025-01-21 shows EMH&T's Robert McCurnin (planning lead), Mariah Anderson, PE (Senior Engineer, Water Resources), and Mackenzie Hebert all working Project Stratus drainage/stormwater design with [[City of Conway]] Transportation Engineer Kurt Jones, P.E. **This is a second Tier-1 corroborating channel for the developer overlap between [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] (Conway) and [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] (Port of Little Rock).** The first was shared counsel ([[Kutak Rock LLP]] / [[Stuart C Hindmarsh]]); this is shared site-civil engineering. Per [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]] / [[D003 Synthesis]] the standard for promoting Tier-3 attribution to Tier-1 is ~three Tier-1 channels — Conway-Willowbend now has two correspondence-based shared-vendor channels visible. Neither channel directly identifies the Conway principal. - **The production contains no Tier-1 city-source identification of the Forgelight principal.** The MOU and the April 1 minutes describe Forgelight as "the Company" / "a US-based Fortune 100 company"; the FAQ never names the principal; the staff Teams chats and emails use "the Company" / "the developer" / "Forgelight" without principal identification; the public-comment emails making the Google attribution argument (Liberty Parks's forwarded op-ed by Courtney Bryan; "I plan to try and speak at tonight's hearing"; the "Say no to data centers" thread) are constituent letters, not city admissions. **[[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]]'s bracketed-adjacent question on Forgelight's principal remains open.** - **The annexation and rezone are temporally aligned with the MOU**: April 1, 2025 MOU approval; April 21, 2025 Planning Commission recommendation; April 22, 2025 City Council adoption of the annexation (O-25-37, O-25-38) and rezone (O-25-39) ordinances; April 3, 2025 Faulkner County Court annexation order; May 12, 2025 Faulkner County recordation. The 22-day timeline from MOU approval to Council adoption is brisk; Jamie Gates's [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence]] memo confirms it was sequenced this way to enable "the company to close on the property and begin the IRB(tax abatement), planning, and permitting processes." - **The City refused to add Project Stratus to the May 12, 2026 City Council Agenda** for further public-comment discussion despite repeated constituent requests. The agenda-inclusion theme runs through 97 of the 204 unique constituent emails, mostly clustered in late April through early May 2026; the [[Conway City Council Agendas and Minutes on Project Stratus|May 12 2026 City Council Agenda]] in the production confirms no Project Stratus item was added. ## People and orgs mentioned City officials: - [[Bart Castleberry]] — Mayor of [[City of Conway]]; signed the MOU and signed the ordinances; signed the FOIA-2026-129 cover letter. - [[Denise Hurd]] — City Clerk / Treasurer; attested the MOU, the April 1 minutes, the April 22 minutes, and all three ordinances; on the City Clerk's "no-records" letter. - [[Charles Finkenbinder]] — City Attorney. - [[Felicia Rogers]] — Chief of Staff, Office of the Mayor; routed Project Stratus correspondence to council; on the early stormwater email thread. - Council members (all signed off on the MOU and all three ordinances 8-0 each): [[Andy Hawkins]] (Council chair; also on Conway Corporation board), David Grimes, Drew Spurgers, Shelley Mehl (also on Conway Corp board), Mark Ledbetter, Spencer Hawks, Theodore Jones Jr., Shelia Isby. City staff: - [[Anne Tucker]] — Planning staff; presented the rezone/annexation maps to the April 22 Council meeting and is the city counterparty on the permits/decision-matrix thread. - [[Kurt Jones]] — Transportation Department engineer, P.E.; city counterparty on the [[EMH&T]] stormwater design discussion. - [[Lauren Hoffman]] — Planning Department staff; circulated a draft data-center ordinance to the April 21 PC meeting per the Teams chat record. - Tyler Winningham — City finance; presented monthly financials at the April 22 meeting. Project / developer side: - [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] — "the Company" in the MOU. - [[Jamie Gates]] — Conway Area Chamber of Commerce / Conway Development Corporation; primary developer-side spokesperson to City Council on the project. - [[Brad Lacy]] — Conway Area Chamber of Commerce; presented the MOU to Council on April 1 2025. - [[Corey Parks]] — Chief Economic Development Officer, [[Conway Development Corporation]] / [[Conway Area Chamber of Commerce]]; primary developer-side coordinator on Project Stratus permits and stormwater design. - Jenifer Kendrick — Conway Chamber of Commerce (cc'd on the Stratus Next Steps email). - John William Adams — landowner and rezone applicant for REZ-0425-0052; inherited the 160-acre site from the Estate of O'Deal L. Adams (Faulkner County Inst. # L202107772, 2021-04-16). - [[EMH&T]] team on Stratus: Robert McCurnin (planning lead), Mariah Anderson PE (Senior Engineer, Water Resources), Mackenzie Hebert. - [[Brett Carroll]] — Conway Corporation; spoke at the April 1 special meeting on grey-water reuse and at the April 22 meeting on the White Bluff / Independence coal-plant agreement (a separate Conway Corp matter on the same agenda). Other: - Alan Rice — public-hearing opponent; spoke at the April 22 Council meeting on behalf of his son [[Jeremy Rice]] who owns property adjacent to the rezone area and was an active constituent emailer. - [[Conway Planning Commission]] members (April 21 2025): Lori Quinn (Chair), Ethan Reed (Vice-Chair), Mark Ferguson (Secretary), Alexander Baney, Jensen Thielke, Jay Winbourne, Brooks Davis, Teneicia Roundtree, Cassidy D Cook, Kevin Gambrill. - [[The Conway Foundation]] — 501(c)(3) recipient of the MOU's "Regional Investment Contribution"; governed by a board. - [[Conway Area Chamber of Commerce]] — co-sponsor of the project on the developer side; runs joint Economic Development Committee with [[Conway Development Corporation]], [[Conway Corporation]], and Conway Downtown Partnership. - [[Conway Development Corporation]] — the economic-development corporation that holds adjacent land in the annexation area (DB 2012 P 1063; DB 2003 P 20243); the case-file owner on REZ-0425-0052. ## Concepts invoked - [[Project Stratus]] — Conway's internal codename for the Forgelight Ventures data center. - [[A-1 to I-3 Rezoning (Conway)]] — agricultural-to-industrial rezone via O-25-39 under Conway Zoning Code §§ 201.1 and 201.3. - [[Act 9 Industrial Revenue Bond]] — the legal vehicle the MOU contemplates for the 30-year, 65% property-tax abatement. - [[Conway Data Center Noise Ordinance (O-23-55)]] — Conway's 2023 data-center noise ordinance; the FAQ flags it as the operative noise-control mechanism for Project Stratus. - Ark. Code § 25-19-105(b)(competitive-advantage exemption) and § 25-19-105(f)(3) (per-record withholding log) — invoked indirectly via the four "PLACEHOLDER" PDFs that flag undisclosed records. ## Events documented - [[2025-04 Conway City Council Approves Project Stratus MOU]] — April 1, 2025 special-meeting 8-0 vote. - [[2025-04 Conway Planning Commission Recommends Project Stratus Annexation and Rezone]] — April 21, 2025 PC meeting. - [[2025-04 Conway City Council Adopts O-25-37 O-25-38 and O-25-39]] — April 22, 2025 regular-meeting 8-0 vote on all three ordinances. - [[2026-05 City of Conway Produces Project Stratus Records]] — this production. ## Cross-references - [[The Conway Data Center Project]] — the project-level synthesis, updated 2026-05-29 to incorporate both the City and Conway Corporation Tier-1 productions. - [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Interim FOIA Response]] — Conway Corporation's separate 2026-05-22 partial response on Item 4 (utility records). - [[2026-05 Little Rock Port Authority Produces Project Boar Records]] — the [[EMH&T]] / [[Kutak Rock LLP]] shared-vendor patterns connecting Project Stratus and Project Boar. - [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend]] — Forgelight-principal-identification question; one new Tier-1 shared-engineer corroboration (EMH&T) added by this production, still short of the three-channel standard. ## Open questions / follow-ups - The four `PLACEHOLDER.*.pdf` file-cards (Property Owners, Survey, Certificates of Mailing or Petitions, Publication) are documents that should accompany any rezone case. The Gmail reply asks whether each is (a) withheld (and if so for the § 25-19-105(f)(3) per-record log), (b) does not exist, or (c) held for later production. - No AEDC, Governor's Office, or Entergy Arkansas correspondence appears in the production despite Item 5 of the request. The Stratus FAQ states explicitly "The company was working with Entergy Arkansas on finding suitable sites in the state" — there should be City correspondence on that solicitation if the project was sited via Entergy site selection. - Conway Corporation's promised rolling production (per Conway Corp's 2026-05-22 interim response on Items 1 and 4(c)) **arrived 2026-05-29** — the cooling-water engineering, NDAs, and early timeline are now Tier-1 ([[2026-05 Conway Corporation Produces Project Stratus Records]]). The Stratus permits / stormwater records here are City-side; the Conway Corp engineering side is now documented (Final Engineering Report and Rate Analysis memorandum still unproduced). - The Act 9 industrial-revenue bond documentation, when issued, will be a follow-on FOIA target. The MOU contemplates "bond ceilings" of $10B real / $50B personal property — figures that scale to a 1 GW build-out and would, if executed, be the largest such instrument in Faulkner County history. - The relocation of Lollie Road, anticipated in the MOU at Section IV(d), is a public-works action that will require its own ordinance and right-of-way exchange. Not yet on a public agenda.