Thousands of acres have been tied up in leases, options and servitudes. Energy developers are proposing projects measured in hundreds of megawatts. Now a renewable-energy developer has confirmed plans for a data center. We started following the paper trail.

Nobody called a meeting to announce that North Calcasieu might be changing.

There was no master plan pinned to a wall at the courthouse, no rendering of what the area north of Moss Bluff could look like ten years from now. If there is a larger story here, it has not arrived neatly packaged for public consumption. It has accumulated the way these stories usually do: one land agreement at a time.

A lease gets recorded. Then another. A developer takes an option on a piece of property. Somebody needs a servitude across somebody else's land. Years pass. A project name eventually surfaces, usually long after the first signatures hit the courthouse.

That is what makes the newest development in Moss Bluff interesting.

On Sept. 8, The Advocate/NOLA.com reported that David Bunge, president of Missouri-based Azimuth Renewables, confirmed his company is pursuing a data center in Moss Bluff. According to that report, Bunge signed an option involving the property in April.

The easy story is that Moss Bluff may be getting a data center.

The more interesting story starts when you ask what Azimuth Renewables is doing there in the first place.

The company behind the data center

Start with the land

The newest file in North Calcasieu doesn't begin with a building permit.

It begins with more than 1,100 acres.

KPLC reported Thursday that Azimuth Renewables has an option to purchase more than 1,100 acres north of Moss Bluff. The property sits north of Coffey Road, between Paul White Road and North Perkins Ferry Road.

Azimuth isn't saying it plans to cover those 1,100 acres with servers and concrete. In fact, the company says the opposite. It describes the project as being in the exploration stage and says any eventual data-center facilities would occupy only a fraction of the property.

That distinction matters.

So does another one.

The land is currently zoned Agricultural. According to Calcasieu Parish, no rezoning or variance application has been submitted. Parish spokesman J.P. Booth told KPLC there is not currently a land-use ordinance allowing data centers in unincorporated Calcasieu Parish.

In other words, the public process is barely beginning.

The land process isn't.

Azimuth already has an option controlling more than 1,100 acres while it determines whether the rest of the equation works.

That is how large developments often begin. An option does not necessarily mean Azimuth has purchased the property. Depending on its terms, it can give the developer the right to acquire it later while engineers, attorneys and development teams investigate whether a project is actually viable.

And there is a lot to investigate before deciding whether 1,100 acres in North Calcasieu can become a data-center site.

Power. Fiber. Water. Transportation. Zoning. Environmental constraints. Easements. Utility infrastructure.

We know that because Azimuth has essentially published its own checklist.

The company behind the option

Azimuth is not a household-name data-center operator. It is a utility-scale renewable-energy developer. The company says it has more than 3.6 gigawatts of solar projects in late-stage development, and president David Bunge's professional history is rooted in large-scale energy development.

That doesn't make the Moss Bluff project suspicious. It makes the developer's business model relevant.

We found another clue in a place companies sometimes reveal more about their intentions than they do in announcements: a job posting.

Azimuth has been recruiting a Data Center Developer to expand what it calls its portfolio of data-center development assets. The responsibilities read less like a technology job and more like instructions for assembling an industrial site. The developer is expected to evaluate electrical power, natural gas, fiber, water, transportation, zoning, environmental constraints and land control; negotiate purchase options and easements; coordinate with utilities; and evaluate the possible integration of electrical generation.

Now put the job description beside what has happened in Moss Bluff.

Azimuth has identified a site.

It has secured an option.

It has placed more than 1,100 acres under that option.

And it is now evaluating whether the infrastructure around that land can support what comes next.

There is still plenty we don't know. The ultimate data-center operator has not been publicly identified. Neither has the project's expected electrical load, water demand, final footprint or construction schedule.

But the acreage is no longer a mystery.

Neither is the general location.

And that makes the next file considerably more interesting.

Because Azimuth isn't the first developer to control a very large amount of land in North Calcasieu years—or potentially years—before the finished project reaches the public process.

Seven square miles of somebody else's plan

Drive north from Moss Bluff and the landscape doesn't announce what has been happening on paper.

Timberland is still timberland. A road is still a road. Nothing about passing a tract at highway speed tells you whether somebody signed a 30-year lease on it four years ago.

The courthouse does.

Orion Renewable Energy Group's proposed Persimmon Energy Center now encompasses roughly 4,700 acres in northern Calcasieu Parish. Orion currently describes the project as capable of producing up to 762 megawatts, with an estimated investment of approximately $2.4 billion.

Four thousand seven hundred acres is a number that's easy to print and hard to visualize. It works out to more than seven square miles.

But acreage isn't the detail that caught our attention.

The timeline did.

Orion says development of Persimmon began with local landowners in 2019. KPLC subsequently went through courthouse records and reported finding at least nine leases involving large parcels, a purchase agreement involving another property, and additional right-of-way and servitude agreements. Some of those recorded instruments date to 2022. The leases reportedly contemplate operating terms of roughly 30 to 37 years.

One property alone exceeds 2,000 acres.

By the time Persimmon became a political controversy in 2026, the project wasn't an idea somebody had just brought to Calcasieu Parish. Pieces of it had been sitting in the public record for years.

That's an important distinction.

As of early September, parish officials told KPLC that Persimmon still had not filed a parish permit application. Read that fact by itself and the project sounds early. Read it beside the land records and you get a very different picture: development beginning in 2019, recorded agreements appearing by 2022, thousands of acres under contract, rights-of-way and servitudes negotiated, and then—years later—the broader public discovering just how large the proposal had become.

There is nothing inherently improper about that. In fact, from a developer's perspective it makes perfect sense. You don't spend millions engineering a 762-megawatt project and then start wondering whether you can control the land underneath it.

But it tells us something important about where to look.

By the time a project reaches the podium, the real story may already be sitting in the conveyance records.

There was another file

Persimmon would be interesting enough on its own. It isn't on its own.

Before Persimmon became the name drawing opposition in North Calcasieu, Aypa Power was pursuing the Cajun Crescent Energy Center, a proposed 375-megawatt solar project spanning portions of Calcasieu and Jefferson Davis parishes.

Aypa describes the project area as rural land north of Lake Charles and Moss Bluff, bounded generally by U.S. 171 to the west and the Calcasieu River to the east. The Calcasieu Parish Planning and Zoning Board rejected the project in 2024. Litigation followed, and in July 2026 the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeal left the board's decision standing, although attorneys for Aypa subsequently said litigation remained active at the district-court level.

Cajun Crescent and Persimmon are not the same project. Azimuth's data center is not either of them. We have found no document establishing that these three developers are working together, and proximity alone would be a reckless basis for claiming otherwise.

That's not the theory we're investigating.

The question is simpler.

Why do sophisticated developers keep arriving at the same part of the parish with projects that need extraordinary amounts of land, electricity or infrastructure?

That question doesn't require a conspiracy. It may have a perfectly mundane answer. Cheap acreage. Transmission. Utility access. Fiber. Water. Favorable terrain. Proximity to industrial infrastructure. Some combination of all of them.

But that's the point.

We don't need to guess.

Those things can be investigated.

Follow the power

The most tempting leap in this story is also the one we're not going to make.

Persimmon proposes up to 762 megawatts of generation. Azimuth proposes a data center. Large data centers can consume extraordinary amounts of electricity.

Put those facts next to each other and the conclusion practically writes itself.

It would also be unsupported.

337.news has found no power-purchase agreement connecting Azimuth and Persimmon, no shared corporate entity, no utility filing establishing a relationship, and no evidence that Persimmon is being developed specifically to serve the Moss Bluff data center. Proposed generating capacity is not the same thing as electrical capacity available to a nearby customer, either.

So, for now, they remain separate files.

But separate files can still point toward the same infrastructure.

And infrastructure leaves tracks.

A project of sufficient size may eventually require utility studies, interconnection work, substations, transmission improvements, easements, rights-of-way, water arrangements, fiber routes, permits or additional land. Companies create subsidiaries. Property changes hands. Agreements get recorded. Applications acquire numbers.

We know considerably more about the board than we did a few days ago. Azimuth has more than 1,100 acres under option north of Coffey Road. Roughly 4,700 acres farther north are tied to Persimmon. Before either became the current story, another developer was already trying to establish a 375-megawatt project in the same broader part of the parish.

We know some of the land. We know some of the companies. We know enough of the timeline to see that the public announcement is often one of the last interesting things to happen, not the first.

What we still don't know is what the infrastructure says.

That is the next file.

Follow the power

Who can supply a data center of unknown size in North Calcasieu? What transmission infrastructure already exists? What would have to be built? What has already been requested? And does any of it intersect with the companies already developing generation nearby?

Maybe the answer to that last question is no.

That's an acceptable answer.

But we're going to get it from the records.

About the Author

I’m a licensed real estate agent serving Southwest Louisiana.

Most people don’t need an agent today. That’s fine.

But if you have a question about a property, land, buying, selling, or value, or just want a second set of eyes before you make a decision, I’m happy to help.

No transaction necessary. Just a conversation.

A five-minute conversation might save you from a bad decision.

Dalton Barron
Real Broker, LLC
C. 337.764.1754
O. 855.450.0442
Licensed by the LREC
Main Office: Baton Rouge, LA

About 337.NEWS

337.NEWS is an independent Southwest Louisiana publication focused on the parts of local stories that deserve a closer look.

That includes real estate, public records, development, business, local data, and the occasional number that does not make sense until you start pulling on it.

This publication is still new. More is coming.