How Meta wanted – and got – secrecy for its Rosemount project
By MIKE KASZUBA
More than a year before Meta – the parent company of Facebook – was publicly identified as the builder of a large data center in suburban Rosemount, the city had agreed to an important request: Keeping the company’s name secret even as intense negotiations took place.
The local school district in Dakota County did the same thing. And Meta’s desire for secrecy was also followed by the University of Minnesota, which was selling 280 acres for the data center for $39.7 million. In fact, a key Meta contact – with the university’s acquiescence -- appeared to use a fake name in his dealings with the university to help keep the company’s identity out of the public eye.
At a six-minute-long public hearing before Rosemount’s planning commission in December 2022, just one person rose to speak -- a consultant for Jimnist, which along with the “Bigfoot Project”, was one of several code names used for the development. The consultant from Kimley-Horn, a nationwide engineering, planning and design firm, told the city panel that the “applicant was still confidential.” The planning commission, despite some misgivings about the lack of detail, voted unanimously that night to approve a master development plan for Jimnist.
Most residents – and even some city officials – did not know that Rosemount was already deep into negotiating a non-disclosure agreement with Jimnist in June 2021, 18 months before the project first came before the city planning commission. A project representative later also pushed to have Dakota County sign a similar non-disclosure agreement so that “we can continue to provide a bit more detail of the project”, including a request for property tax abatements.
Documents obtained by Public Record Media (PRM), a non-profit based in Saint Paul, show how Meta – using a broad strategy involving code names and non-disclosure agreements – obtained early buy-in from largely willing local officials months and even years before the company’s identity was formally made public by the university in September 2023.
Meta also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive.
Data centers have become increasingly important in the 21st century as companies like Meta need large physical locations to store computing machines, servers, and digital data and also process reams of information. The centers can use large amounts of electricity, and water, making them important customers for utility companies.
Meta’s non-disclosure agreement in Rosemount was similar to what Sherburne County and City of Becker officials signed in 2018 to try to lure Google to build a large data center in Minnesota. Though the project fell through, the negotiations took place in secret for months and included discussions of a subsidy package for Google.
The non-disclosure agreement that Rosemount city officials signed in July 2022 likewise asserted significant restrictions over what was considered confidential – and, thus, secret -- information.
Confidential information, according to the agreement, included “the existence of this Agreement”, the “fact or nature of the discussions between the parties” and the “existence of the project.” Most importantly, confidential information also included “the entity/company behind the project.”
Such a broad definition of “confidential” data is not allowed by the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act — the State of Minnesota’s open records law. That law’s “trade secret” provision permits government entities to withhold certain types of sensitive business information under a multi-part test. That test does not, however, permit a company’s identify, or the mere “existence” of a project from being withheld as “trade secret” data.
PRM eventually reviewed hundreds of documents from the University of Minnesota, the city of Rosemount, Dakota County, the local school district and Xcel Energy, the Minnesota-headquartered utility that also dealt with the Meta project.
The documents also showed how Kimley-Horn, the private consulting firm representing Meta, played a large role in steering an array of public officials toward approving the project while Meta’s name was kept secret.
At one meeting in November 2022, which included eight officials from Dakota County and Rosemount, a three-page meeting summary noted that “it was agreed that this format of project team meetings to chunk out design comments makes sense, with Kimley-Horn to track design decisions, meeting notes, and deliverables.”
A dim view of project critics
At another point, after Meta was disclosed as the project developer, Trisha Sieh of Kimley-Horn took a dim view of citizens who criticized the project at a Rosemount public hearing. “About half of them left BEFORE [the city planning commission] started or finished responding to their questions, showing they aren’t going to listen, but want to be heard,” Sieh wrote in an email to city officials after the hearing.
Describing the comments made by one speaker, Sieh said that “Sharon said [her] kids played on the UMore land and tagged buildings (trespassing) and came home with pockets of lead pellets and then put pictures on Facebook (ironic).”
(The property was acquired by the University of Minnesota in the late 1940s after being the site of a munitions manufacturer during World War II).
“I think we need to decide if we want to offer more of the positive side of the data centers and community impact so this narrative by a small portion of community members doesn’t spin out of control,” Sieh added. “I don’t see the [City Council] swaying as easily as a few of the [planning commission] members almost were. [Staff] should be able to give us a good read on that and if we need to ‘sell’ more.”
The documents in addition showed how pressure was exerted on local officials to begin approving the project – while keeping Meta’s name secret. In one instance, according to the documents, Xcel Energy seemed to be acting as a go-between to try to get Rosemount officials to sign the non-disclosure agreement.
“Attached are a redline and clean revision of the City [non-disclosure agreement],” a Meta representative wrote in a June 2021 email to Dan Pfeiffer, Xcel’s director of strategy and corporate economic development. “Please have them review one more time and let me know if these terms are acceptable.”
Enter “Ken Confidential”
At the University of Minnesota, the secrecy surrounding Meta’s identity included an eye-opening twist – emails on the project were regularly exchanged between a top school official and a Meta representative who identified himself only as “Ken Confidential.”
“If you guys give the go ahead, I will be presenting the transaction to the [university’s Board of] Regents at their meeting on Thursday 9/7,” Leslie Krueger, the school’s assistant vice president for planning, space and real estate, said in an email to Ken Confidential in early August 2023.
“As previously discussed, the Docket materials get published the Friday before the meeting (9/1) at noon. That is when the transaction summary (price and parent company name) would become public,” Krueger wrote.
Jake Ricker, a school spokesman, confirmed that school officials knew that the Meta representative was not using a real name. “It’s my understanding Ken Confidential was an alias used for confidentiality purposes by a Meta representative working on the Bigfoot transaction with the University,” he told PRM in an email.
Using the alias, documents showed that Ken Confidential regularly communicated with the university – including making requests to have Meta representatives tour the Rosemount property.
“I wanted to see if [we] could have access to the site for walking and driving on existing gravel roads in case we have some of our construction people in town,” Ken Confidential said in a June 2023 email to Krueger. The email was sent three months before the university announced publicly that Meta was buying the property.
In August 2023, with Meta’s name not yet disclosed, Ken Confidential also made plans for a three-hour meeting with university officials at a fire station in Rosemount. The meeting, according to a proposed agenda, would among other things discuss the project’s concept plan, detailed site plan and rezoning application. “We were also thinking about inviting some City of Rosemount reps,” Ken Confidential added in another email to Krueger. “Do you think that’s a good idea or would you rather keep it just us?”
In fact, officials at the university, the city and the school district were often willing participants in the company’s push to keep its name out of the public eye for as long as possible.
That included the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan public school district. “The School District's former Director of Finance and Operations attended a meeting for which he was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement in order to hear more about the project and potential benefits to the school district,” Janet Swiecichowski, a school district spokesperson, said in an email to PRM.
“The School District did not continue to be involved in the project,” she added. “It is not unusual for the School District to sign a non-disclosure agreement for a development project.”
But moving the project so far forward without knowing key details – including the developer’s identity – did lead some to pause.
At a City Council meeting in Rosemount in March 2023, one City Council member asked whether it was “unusual without knowing the specific project” to approve a master development plan for it.
Adam Kienberger, the city’s community development director, reassured city officials. “While this is [unusual] not knowing the specific project,” Kienberger explained, according to the minutes of the City Council meeting, “several developers enter [into] non-disclosure agreements until they are certain the project will move forward for various reasons, i.e. competitive market.”
Before the initial city planning commission meeting in late 2022, the commission’s chair, was given a list of “talking points” she could refer to “in case you get any inquiries ahead of the meeting.”
Information “we’re comfortable with you sharing”
The email sent to Melissa Kenninger, the chair, by Kienberger in December 2022 began by saying, “below is basic information we’re comfortable with you sharing.”
Kenninger was told that a “Fortune 500 company is looking to build a high-tech campus”, and that the project would be an “excellent fit” for the community. Kenninger was likewise told the project would generate a “relatively low impact to government services, such as schools, public safety and traffic networks once [it’s] operational.”
But she was also told: “The corporate identity of the applicant has not been disclosed yet, this is typical for large projects until they have confirmed the project is viable.”
Replied Kenninger: “Thanks. Is there a map that was sent out with this? If so can I get a copy?”
At the planning commission meeting, the project was given a unanimous initial approval –but with some commissioners in the dark over basic information.
One commissioner, Brenda Rivera, wanted to know whether the proposed technology project would be used by the University of Minnesota, the property’s then-owner. No, she was told. Another planning commission member said he had a “concern” regarding the “high level of flexibility” that was being given to the unnamed developer. Could city officials, he asked, “recall any proposals with a similar level of flexibility[?]”
According to the minutes of the meeting, Anthony Nemcek, the city’s senior planner, replied: “There have not been many projects like this in the past.”
Nearly a year later, after Meta’s name was disclosed as the project developer, at least one key city official said she still needed more details. The questions continued as the city – and Meta’s representatives – prepared for an open house on the project for residents.
“I know the staff report on Meta application [won’t] be out for another few weeks but [is] it possible to get a copy of their application or anything that I could read ahead of the open house on Wednesday,” Kenninger, the planning commission chair, said in a November 2023 email.
“I’d like to be a bit more informed on the plans/proposal before the open house,” she added.
At times, the project’s different code names appeared to lead to confusion.
In August 2022, a Meta representative said that an official at Dakota County Technical College – which sits near the project – apologized for being confused about the project because of its code name.
“He apologized about the emails, he was confused by “Bigfoot” and didn’t realize that was our project,” said the Meta representative, who identified himself in an email only as “Ken D” of Bigfoot Development Services. The email was sent to Rosemount city officials and Kimley-Horn representatives among others.
Others from Bigfoot Development Services also interacted with local public officials.
One email in July 2022 from “Jade S” from Bigfoot Development Services focused again on getting local officials to sign a non-disclosure agreement. In the email, entitled “Re: County NDA” and sent to a top Rosemount city official, “Jade S” wrote that “I know there are sensitivities on what can be said with the Board of Regents meeting pushed out a bit, but we are still hoping we can move many things forward with the NDA in place in the interim.”
A non-disclosure agreement for two years
A non-disclosure agreement for two yearsity officials signed a revised non-disclosure agreement with Jimnist LLC on July 1, 2022 – more than a year before the university made public that Meta was buying its property. The one-page document, which expired in two years, was signed by Logan Martin, the city administrator.
The agreement asked Rosemount to “hold Confidential information in strict confidence and take reasonable precautions to protect Confidential information.” It added that “any employee or contractor given access to any Confidential information must have a legitimate ‘need to know.’ "
According to the agreement, confidential information was defined as “information disclosed to [the city] at any time relating to Discloser’s business, including, without limitation, product designs, product plans, software and technology, financial information, marketing plans, business opportunities, proposed terms, pricing information, discounts, inventions and know-how.”
Rosemount officials did balk at some items, particularly the company’s initial request that the length of the non-disclosure agreement last for five years. The city instead asked for – and got – a two-year agreement. The final agreement also required the city to adhere to information requests made under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.
As the project moved ahead, Kimley-Horn pressed city officials to keep things on schedule – and seemed to be in charge of controlling the process.
In one July 2023 email, Jacob Rojer of Kimley-Horn told representatives from the company, along with city and county officials, that more meetings were needed “so we can all get on the same page and figure out how we can get back on the original timeline.”
In October 2023, Kimley-Horn’s Sieh shared her worries with a city official about an upcoming Dakota County meeting. “Do you know if there is any risk to this meeting?” asked Sieh. “Or rubber stamp? It’s later than Bigfoot would prefer.”
But Kimley-Horn was not the only one stressing the importance of the project.
More than a month before Meta’s identify was disclosed by the University of Minnesota, a top representative at Greater MSP stressed the project’s importance to Minnesota in an email to Dakota County and Rosemount officials, along with an official from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).
(Greater MSP is a regional economic development partnership that includes some of the biggest corporations in Minnesota, including Target, Cargill and Medtronic. Ironically, it was Greater MSP and DEED that had earlier worked to keep secret the state’s unsuccessful bid to lure Amazon to Minnesota to build a second corporate headquarters in the U.S. The state’s Amazon bid was eventually made public in May 2019 after PRM filed a lawsuit seeking its release).
The Meta project “is a big one for the region and we’re getting close to having it secured,” Amanda Taylor, Greater MSP’s vice president for business investment, said in a July 2023 email.
“Greater MSP had a good chat with the company team yesterday,” she added.
“The company’s concerns are consistent with what we’ve seen in the past with projects of this magnitude as they are working to close out remaining risks before they can make an investment decision,” Taylor said.
(Supporting documents for this article can be accessed by contacting Public Record Media at admin@publicrecordmedia.org , or at 651-556-1381)