# Pulaski County — AVAIO Project Leo Planning File (production overview) Twenty-five documents produced by [[Pulaski County Government]] on 2026-05-22 — the Planning & Development Department's land-use and environmental-permitting file for the **AVAIO "Project Leo" data center** at 145th Street in unincorporated Pulaski County. This is the first corpus production to document the Project Leo site directly, rather than the regulatory and utility context around it. ## Provenance Produced by Cedric Simpson, paralegal, Pulaski County Attorney's Office, by email on 2026-05-22 ([correspondence thread](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/19e50693be326fd7)), in response to the Arkansas FOIA request [[Joshua Dunlap]] filed the same day. County Attorney Hamilton Kemp stated the responsive records "all came from the County Planning Department" and that the county holds no other responsive records — see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response]]. The 25 files arrived as email attachments and are stored, unmodified, in `raw/county-pulaski/project-leo-2026-05-22/`. ## What's inside The 25 documents are organized into five source pages: - [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review]] — the site plan application, the site plan drawings, the county's two review checklists, and the conditional-approval notice (5 files). - [[AVAIO Project Leo Data Center Floor Plans]] — the 40 MW and 60 MW data-center building floor plans (2 files). - [[Project Leo Engineering and Environmental Permits]] — the drainage report, the construction stormwater plan (SWPPP), the federal Clean Water Act permit application, and the county driveway permit (4 files). - [[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]] — eleven county emails, 2024–2026 (11 files). - [[Vesta Addition Reversion to Acreage]] — the revocation of a 1912 subdivision plat inside the site, plus the 1965 precedent records the county supplied as a template (3 files). ## The site and the project The production identifies the Project Leo site precisely: a **296.354-acre** tract at **approximately 2500 145th Street**, unincorporated Pulaski County, southeast of Little Rock — roughly one mile east of the 145th Street / U.S. Highway 65 intersection ([[Project Leo Engineering and Environmental Permits]], `AVAIO_NWP_PCN_Application.pdf`, p. 1). The developer of record is **[[AVAIO Digital Partners]]** of Stamford, Connecticut; the project is engineered by **[[Kimley-Horn]]** and titled, on AVAIO's own county application, "AVAIO — Project Little Rock" ([[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review]], `Pulaski County Site Plan Application.pdf`). Internally the county called it the "145th Street Development"; "Project Leo" is the name AVAIO and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission used publicly. The 296-acre tract is the footprint reviewed by the county; AEDC's announcement describes a larger ~760-acre campus. ## The central finding: the county had little leverage The Project Leo site sits in **unincorporated, un-zoned county territory**. AVAIO's engineer wrote to the county on 2024-09-30: *"We understand there is no zoning, and therefore, no land use restrictions on the property. We also understand that the project will not be subject to a public hearing at this time"* ([[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]], `email 101025.pdf`, p. 6). The county's only review was an **administrative site plan review** by Planning & Development staff — no rezoning, no variance, no Quorum Court vote, and no public hearing ([[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review]]). Asked by an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter (April 2026) whether the county could stop a data center, planner [[Jim Cranor]] wrote internally: *"with the ordinances currently adopted, Pulaski County would have difficulties stopping uses like data centers unless such a facility were proposed in the Lake Maumelle Watershed or were proposed in an area of one of the former ETJ's with a zoning classification other than Industrial"* ([[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]], `email 042426.pdf`, p. 2). This is the documentary explanation for the [[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response|county's earlier "no records" response]]: with no zoning role and no incentive role, Project Leo generated no PILOT, bond, or Quorum Court records. The single Quorum Court touchpoint is a May 2025 county land-use plan (Ord. 25-OR-20) that classified the area "high impact industrial" — not a data-center-specific action. ## Capacity The federal Clean Water Act permit application states the build is **"one 60-megawatt (MW) structure and four 40-MW structures with associated gen buildings for each of the five structures"** — 220 MW across five data-center buildings ([[Project Leo Engineering and Environmental Permits]], `AVAIO_NWP_PCN_Application.pdf`, p. 1). The [[AVAIO Project Leo Data Center Floor Plans|40 MW and 60 MW floor plans]] are those two building types. The design evolved substantially: the September 2024 site plan totaled 3,426,000 SF of building across the campus with two electrical substations (8.92 and 11 acres); by March 2026 [[Jim Cranor]] described "the current version of the site plan" as "6 single and multi-story buildings" totaling 1,771,800 SF, with a 5.30-acre and a 20-acre substation ([[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]], `email 032026.pdf`). These are the first building-level capacity figures for Project Leo in the corpus; earlier records carried only the public "150 MW contracted, up to 1 GW" framing. ## The corporate and contractor structure - **[[AVAIO Digital Partners]]** — developer of record (107 Elm Street, Suite 501, Stamford, CT), with affiliate **AVAIO Capital LLC**; principals [[Tom Nesel]] and Joe Hubbard use `@avaiocapital.com` addresses. - **[[ADP Little Rock Data Hub, LLC]]** — the project entity named as the NPDES construction-stormwater permit operator, at AVAIO's Stamford address ([[Project Leo Engineering and Environmental Permits]], `AVAIO Final SWPPP WITH NOC & STAA 04-02-2026.pdf`, p. 1). - **[[Kimley-Horn]]** — civil engineer of record; [[Brianna Covington]], P.E., is the project engineer. - **[[Stantec]]** — environmental consultant; prepared the USACE Clean Water Act permit application. - **Yates Construction** — general contractor (per the SWPPP responsible-parties table). - **[[Arnett Construction Company]]** — a Cabot, Arkansas firm that holds land inside the site, revoked the old Vesta Addition plat as the tract's fee owner, and pulled the county driveway permit. ## Environmental posture Site stormwater drains to an unnamed tributary, then **Fish Creek** — which the SWPPP records as on Arkansas's **303(d) list of impaired waters** for pH and dissolved oxygen — then Lorance Creek, Pennington Bayou, and the Arkansas River ([[Project Leo Engineering and Environmental Permits]], `AVAIO Final SWPPP WITH NOC & STAA 04-02-2026.pdf`, p. 2). The build disturbs 129 of the 296 acres, clears roughly 167 acres of forest, and culverts three streams under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit (file SWL-2025-00064). **No cooling-water source is named anywhere in the county file** — consistent with the gap recorded in [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]]. ## Transparency notes - AVAIO's site plan drawings and application are stamped *"CONFIDENTIAL — THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS TRADE SECRETS AND COMMERCIAL/FINANCIAL INFORMATION — EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE UNDER PUBLIC INFORMATION ACT."* Pulaski County produced them under the Arkansas FOIA notwithstanding that stamp. - The file shows the data center has drawn prior public scrutiny: an earlier FOIA requester ("Val Hart," February 2026), resident inquiries, and an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette media inquiry (April 2026) — see [[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]]. - The federal permit application twice locates the project in *"Pulaski County, Kentucky"* — a Stantec drafting error; all parcel numbers and coordinates are in Arkansas. ## People and orgs - [[Jim Cranor]], [[Van McClendon]] — [[Pulaski County Government]] Planning & Development - [[Brianna Covington]] — [[Kimley-Horn]]; [[Tom Nesel]] — [[AVAIO Digital Partners]] / AVAIO Capital - [[AVAIO Digital Partners]], [[ADP Little Rock Data Hub, LLC]], [[Kimley-Horn]], [[Stantec]], [[Arnett Construction Company]], [[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]] - [[Pulaski County Government]], [[Entergy Arkansas]] (an existing Arkansas Power & Light Company transmission easement crosses the site) ## Concepts - [[Site plan review]], [[Reversion to acreage]], [[Nationwide Permit]] ## Events - [[2024-09 AVAIO Files Its Project Leo Site Plan with Pulaski County]] - [[2024-12 Pulaski County Conditionally Approves the Project Leo Site Plan]] - [[2025-12 Project Leo Site Construction Begins]] ## Cross-references - This production answers the open question left by [[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response]] — the Planning & Development records on Project Leo — and confirms why the county holds no PILOT, bond, or Quorum Court records. - It anchors the former index seed "AVAIO Digital" to a documented developer, [[AVAIO Digital Partners]], parallel to how the [[2026-05 Department of Agriculture FOIA Response|Agriculture production]] anchored the Google data center. - The Project Leo electric load is the data-center demand behind the [[Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider]] new-generation buildout and the [[Entergy CEO Direct Testimony|$1.7 billion savings]] claim — neither of which names the site. ## Open questions / follow-ups - **Cooling water.** No cooling-water source — groundwater, surface water, or treated wastewater — appears anywhere in this county file. Whether Project Leo is one of the unnamed cooling-water projects in [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] remains unresolved. - **The electric service agreement.** The county file describes on-site substations but not Project Leo's contract with [[Entergy Arkansas]]; that agreement is a [[Special rate contract]] not in the public record. - **Land ownership.** The September 2024 site plan labels parcels held by [[Arnett Construction Company]] within the site; the full ownership breakdown of the 296-acre tract — and AVAIO's acquisition terms — is not established by this production. - **Site plan evolution.** The building program shrank from ~3.43M SF (September 2024) to ~1.77M SF (March 2026); the records explaining the change were not all produced.