# The Conway Data Center Project The Conway project — internal codename **[[Project Stratus]]** — is one of the six Arkansas hyperscale data-center sites under investigation: a ~1-gigawatt-design data center on a ~160-acre site at the NE corner of Lollie Road and Donnell Ridge Road in Conway, Faulkner County, with developer-of-record [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] (a Delaware shell whose ultimate principal is undisclosed). What was a bare index seed until 2026-05-22 is now anchored by **two Tier-1 FOIA productions**: the City of Conway's land-use production of [[2026-05 City of Conway Produces Project Stratus Records|2026-05-26]] (303 files — MOU, annexation/rezone ordinances, the staff FAQ, public-comment record) and Conway Corporation's utility production of [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Produces Project Stratus Records|2026-05-29]] (26 records — the cooling-water engineering, NDAs, and 2024 timeline). This page consolidates what the record shows; it remains a `confidence: low` synthesis (downgraded from `medium` per [[D003 Synthesis]] 2026-05-24) — **not** because the facts are thin (the deal terms, the site, the timeline, and the engineering are now richly Tier-1-anchored) but because **the identity of the principal behind the developer remains unidentified, and the wiki applies its own [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] restraint standard rather than naming a "leading candidate" on circumstantial evidence**. See [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend]] and [[D003 Synthesis]] for the dialectic that established this framing. ## Evidence **The MOU and its approval.** On 2025-04-01 the Conway City Council, in special session, voted 8-0 to approve a memorandum of understanding for "a special economic development project" (primary public record, [April 1, 2025 council minutes](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/conwayarkansas.gov/04-01-2025-special-council-mtg.md)). The MOU names four parties: [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]], the [[City of Conway]], [[Conway Corporation]], and the Conway Foundation (primary public record, [April 1, 2025 council agenda packet](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/media.conwayarkansas.gov/april-1-2025-special-city-council-agenda.md)). The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce presented it as "the first formal piece of what will be multiple agreements." **The project.** Per the MOU, Forgelight Ventures would build "an approximately 300,000 square foot data center building," ancillary buildings, and infrastructure, for an investment of "approximately $1,000,000,000," creating "approximately 50 new high-quality jobs," and expandable to additional data-center buildings under the same terms. **The developer.** The Arkansas Secretary of State registry shows [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] is a Delaware shell limited liability company, foreign-registered in Arkansas on 2025-02-11, with a commercial registered agent and no disclosed parent; its organizer of record is [[Michael Montfort]] (primary public record, [SoS entity record](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/sos-corp-search.ark.org/forgelight-ventures-llc-sos-record.md)). *Data Center Dynamics* reported on 2026-05-21 that Montfort is also the incorporator of [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] — the applicant for a $1 billion Port of Little Rock data center that the *Arkansas Democrat-Gazette* reported is Google's (web research 2026-05-22, [DCD report](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/www.datacenterdynamics.com/google-behind-1bn-data-center-in-little-rock-arkansas-report.md)). The Arkansas registry shows the two developers are twin filings — [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] and Willowbend Capital were registered in Arkansas the same day (2025-02-11), with the same registered agent, the same Delaware private-mailbox address ("PMB 160," 2801 Centerville Road, Wilmington), and near-consecutive filing numbers (811535239 / 811535247). **Per [[D003 Synthesis]], the structural correspondence with [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] is noted but not traversed as an identification of the Forgelight principal.** Six of the seven "fingerprint match" dimensions (registration date, state of origin, registered agent, mailbox, organizer, consecutive filing numbers) collapse to artifacts of a shared commercial registry-vendor stack — Corporation Service Company is one of the largest registered-agent services in the country, and PMB 160 is a private-mailbox forwarder shared by thousands of unrelated entities; *DCD* itself "does not assert that Google is behind the Conway / Forgelight project" ([[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] Notes). The Conway company remains officially "a US-based Fortune 100 company." Applying the wiki's own [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] restraint standard — "the circumstantial lead toward AVAIO / Project Leo for the Arup project is **not** an identification" — the Conway principal is unidentified on the existing record. See [[The Port of Little Rock Data Center]] for the structurally weaker but directly-Tier-3-reported parallel case. **The public subsidy.** The City commits to support "a net real and personal property tax abatement of at least 65% for 30 years." The minutes identify the vehicle as "an Act 9 Bond, or Industrial Revenue Bond"; the abatement runs the length of the bond, after which the property "would revert back to the tax rolls." The MOU describes the bond structures as "broad and flexible," contemplating investment ceilings of "$10,000,000,000 for real property and $50,000,000,000 for personal property" — figures far above the ~$1 billion initial build, anticipating large expansion. In exchange, Forgelight Ventures would pay an annual "Regional Investment Contribution" to the Conway Foundation, a 501c3, beginning after the first data center's certificate of occupancy. The Chamber told the Council "the City is not obligated to any debt associated with the project." **The utilities.** Electric service is split. Conway Corporation supplies medium-voltage power (13.8 kV, expandable to 10 MW), subject to a 2.5% city franchise fee; [[Entergy Arkansas]] supplies high-voltage power (230 kV and up), with the City to enact a 0.75% high-voltage franchise fee "agreeable to both the City and to Entergy Arkansas." Cooling water would be treated effluent ("disinfected secondary effluent") from the Tupelo Bayou Wastewater Treatment Plant, piped to the site by Conway Corporation; cooling-tower blowdown would discharge to the Arkansas River through a dedicated Conway Corporation line, requiring U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ADEQ permitting. The MOU also contemplates relocating "Lollie Road." **The FOIA response.** Conway Corporation's 2026-05-22 interim response reported no records for the executed service agreements (4a), cooling-water/wastewater agreements (4b), Entergy bulk-power correspondence (4d), and ratepayer cost-allocation analyses (4e) — consistent with the MOU's own statement that those agreements "are being negotiated in a separate agreement." Items 1 (developer correspondence) and 4(c) (capacity-expansion analyses) were placed under § 25-19-105(b) review, with rolling production to follow. See [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Interim FOIA Response]]. **The utility engineering (Conway Corporation Production 001, 2026-05-29).** The rolling production arrived on 2026-05-29 — 26 records that move the cooling-water plan from MOU-level commitment to Tier-1 engineering record (see [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Produces Project Stratus Records]] and the [[city-conway/conway-corp-stratus-2026-05-29/_overview|production overview]]): - **The timeline starts in mid-2024.** Conway Corporation CEO [[Brett Carroll|Bret Carroll]] accepted a "Project Stratus Discussion" on 2024-06-21 — the earliest dated Stratus reference in the corpus — and an **October 2, 2024 utilities site visit** toured the Tupelo Bayou WWTP, attended by [[Arkansas Economic Development Commission|AEDC]] Project Manager [[Raven Johnson]] (the corpus's first Tier-1 AEDC–Stratus link). Confidential utility coordination ran nine-plus months before the public MOU vote. See [[2024-10 Project Stratus Utilities Site Visit]]. - **The cooling-water scheme is engineered.** [[Garver]] scoped the water/wastewater questions in 2024; [[Black & Veatch]] then carried the formal evaluation of [[Tupelo Bayou Treated-Effluent Cooling|Tupelo Bayou treated effluent]] (NPDES AR0051951, Outfall 001 → Arkansas River) as cooling-tower makeup — a PFAS workshop, a 30-plus-constituent water-quality panel, a developer-funded **Reimbursement Agreement**, and an April 2026 **Final Engineering Report**. See [[Black & Veatch Effluent-Cooling Engineering for Project Stratus]]. - **NDAs on both sides.** A corporate NDA bound Conway Corporation and Black & Veatch; individual staff NDAs bound Conway Corporation employees to a developer-side entity, **[[Spark Innovations, LLC]]** (New York law) — a name distinct from [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] and a new lead for [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]]. See [[Conway Corporation Project Stratus NDAs]]. - **The "who pays" gap persists.** The production confirms the Item 1 / 4(c) correspondence but **not** the executed supply agreement (4b) or any ratepayer cost-allocation analysis (4e); the Black & Veatch **Rate Analysis memorandum** — the document that would supply 4(e) — is referenced as in progress but unproduced. ## Caveats - The MOU and minutes are Tier-2 primary public records; the April 2025 commitments are now corroborated by two Tier-1 FOIA productions (City 2026-05-26, Conway Corporation 2026-05-29). - The site **is** now located (City production): the ~160-acre Adams Property at the NE corner of Lollie Rd and Donnell Ridge Rd (N½ and S½ NE¼ of Section 30, T5N R14W, Faulkner County), rezoned A-1→I-3 by Ordinance O-25-39. What remains unknown is the project's **current construction status** and whether the Adams-to-developer closing deed has recorded (not in the corpus). - The published MOU is unexecuted — its four signature blocks are blank — though the minutes record the Council's approval. - **The principal behind [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] is unidentified on the existing record** (per [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend]] and [[D003 Synthesis]]). The registry shows a Delaware shell and names organizer [[Michael Montfort]]; no source in the corpus identifies Google or any other entity as the Conway developer; *Data Center Dynamics* — the wiki's own cited secondary source — explicitly declined to attribute Forgelight to Google despite having every incentive to make the connection. The wiki applies the [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] restraint standard: circumstantial leads are not identifications. The Conway company remains officially "a US-based Fortune 100 company"; the Chamber withheld the name from the City Council. The structural correspondence with [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] (twin Delaware shells, same organizer, same registry vendors) is documented but does not, on the present record, establish a common principal — the shared dimensions are largely artifacts of a common commercial registry-vendor stack used by many unrelated entities. - The minutes record the Chamber's statement that the project "is not a data mining center" — distinguishing it from cryptocurrency mining, not further characterizing the workload. ## Open questions - Identification of the corporate principal behind [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] — unresolved on the existing record. The 2026-05-29 production surfaced the developer-side NDA entity [[Spark Innovations, LLC]], and a SoS registry check (2026-05-29) established it is a **third [[Michael Montfort]]-managed Delaware shell** — same manager, agent, and Wilmington DE mailbox building as Forgelight and [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] (filing 811524872, 2024-11-25). So the Conway project ties into the Montfort shell cluster through **two** entities (Forgelight, the MOU developer; Spark, the NDA "Company"), and Spark also carries a Tier-3 association — as a *since-superseded earlier* affiliate — with the West Memphis site that is independently confirmed as a Google build (the confirmation attaching to [[GROOT LLC]], not to Spark). Dialectic [[D005 Synthesis|D005]] (2026-05-29) adjudicated whether this revises the Conway framing and **reaffirmed restraint** (`resolved-via-D003`): the finding strengthens the documented Montfort developer-overlap pattern (three shells; two Conway footholds; one Tier-3 edge toward GROOT) but adds no Tier-1 channel naming Google, so the wiki records the **stronger Tier-2 structural link without naming the Conway principal**. See [[Spark Innovations, LLC]] and [[D005 Synthesis]]. The wiki's other tools for closing the gap include the pending AEDC FOIA (now known to hold Stratus records, per [[Raven Johnson]]'s site-visit attendance), ADEQ/ADH permitting filings naming a facility operator, any SEC or Form D filing by a parent, and any subsequent named-source reporting. Per [[D003 Synthesis]], naming Google (or any other entity) on the present record would violate the wiki's [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] restraint standard. - The Conway project's structural correspondence with the [[The Port of Little Rock Data Center|Port of Little Rock data center]] (developer [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] / "Project Boar") — documented in [[Forgelight Ventures, LLC]] notes and in the developer subsection above. Per [[D003 Synthesis]], the correspondence is suggestive but does not constitute identification of the Forgelight principal. - The separate executed agreements the MOU defers — the service agreement, the cooling-water supply agreement, the infrastructure-financing agreement — remain unproduced even after both productions; the [[Black & Veatch]] **Final Engineering Report** and **Rate Analysis memorandum** (referenced in the 2026-05-29 production but not attached) are the highest-value follow-on FOIA targets. - How Conway Corporation recovers from its own ratepayers the capital cost of the cooling-water pipeline, the blowdown line, and the medium-voltage expansion the MOU assigns to it — the investigation's "who pays for the buildout" question, here in a municipal-utility setting (FOIA item 4(e) returned no cost-allocation records). - The project's relationship to [[Entergy Arkansas]]'s high-voltage service — whether the Conway load is or will become an Entergy [[Special rate contract|special-contract]] customer, and whether it figures in Entergy's resource planning and the [[Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider|new-generation cost recovery]].