Dawn Marquardt Sep 25, 2025 Share Legal Disclaimer: The following reflects my personal opinions and observations under the First Amendment. Readers are encouraged to review the public record and draw their own conclusions. April 2025: Talk of a Data Center West of LaBarge The old Tulsa townsite is a platted townsite on paper, roughly 48 acres carved out of a 640-acre section just west of LaBarge. It has never had roads, water, or sewer put in, but the lots have been platted and deeded for decades, passing through families and private owners. In April 2025, a Lincoln County Commissioner told a LaBarge resident that a data center west of LaBarge, on this very Tulsa townsite, was part of the County’s vision for future development.[^1] That conversation piqued my interest, so I started digging. Around the same time, Criterium representatives presented their Lincoln Star ISD slide deck to the County, listing projects including a bituminous/asphalt plant, a truck stop at Opal, agricultural facilities, and multiple data centers that were pitched as the “money maker” for the district.[^2] When I pulled parcel data that month, nearly every lot in the old Tulsa townsite was still owned by individuals, family trusts, or heirs.[^3] June 4, 2024: The First Public Glimpse of the Plan Before Tulsa, before the ISD, before the $500,000 loan, Lincoln County was already talking about Criterium and the vision for southern Lincoln County. At the June 4, 2024 Commission meeting, County Grant Writer Mary Crosby laid out the rationale for involving Criterium Management Company: “The only way for governmental entities to get significant grant dollars is if you have industry that is willing to sign a letter of commitment to the government standards. … The County isn’t the right one to lead the effort, it should be a private effort with County involvement guided by statute.”[^4] Criterium’s managing director, Edward Ekstrom, presented a proposal to form an Improvement and Service District (ISD) and industrial park development, including a 20-year master infrastructure strategy to support the TriSight coal-reuse site and prepare for future data centers. Chief of Staff Stephen Allen endorsed the plan, calling it “an innovative way to pursue the infrastructure and create the ISD that will push the infrastructure.”[^4] This was the first breadcrumb, nearly a year before Tulsa’s name came into the conversation. Tulsa Townsite June–August 2025: Discovering Tulsa is County Land Fast-forward to June 2025. I’m reading the June 17 Commission minutes and see Criterium’s Ed Ekstrom standing before the Commission offering to buy the County’s holdings in Tulsa for $6,500 plus 10% of future net profits.[^5] Hold on, what county holdings? Just two months earlier, almost everything out there was still privately owned. I went back to check the parcel maps and sure enough, by summer, nearly the entire townsite now showed Lincoln County as the owner. But when I tried to trace back how and...