In development · Pueblo County, Colorado
A compute operator on the grid waits years for an interconnection. Mendara develops off-grid power campuses where the generation, the switchgear and the distribution go in before a tenant signs, so the tenant's clock starts at their building instead of in a utility queue. Our first campus is in development in Pueblo County, Colorado, planned at 30 MW in Phase 1 and 200 MW at full build-out.
The problem
Capital is moving into compute infrastructure faster than the grid can connect it. The average interconnection request now takes close to five years to reach commercial operation, up from under two years in 2008, and more than two terawatts of generation and storage sit waiting in queues. Only about a fifth of the projects that entered those queues between 2000 and 2019 were operating by the end of 2024.
Interconnection figures: RMI analysis of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory queue data, 2025.
An operator with capital, chips and a signed customer can still be four years from serving a single rack. That is not a financing problem or a silicon problem. It is a queue.
The model inverts the usual order. Develop, permit, finance and energize the campus first, on land Mendara owns and keeps. Then lease lots to operators who bring their own buildings and their own hardware. Mendara holds the land and the plant permanently and carries the obligation to keep them running.
Because generation and distribution go in ahead of the lease, a tenant's schedule begins at their own foundation rather than at a utility study queue. Target is eight to nine months from lease to operation.
Each lot is designed to produce a ground lease and a capacity agreement. Mendara will not sell the land and will not sell the plant. Built once, leased repeatedly, held permanently.
The campus is islanded and self-supplied. It does not draw on the regulated grid, it does not require transmission upgrades paid for by other customers, and it does not put a large new load in front of households in the queue.
The place
Not as a figure of speech. Pueblo County has asked publicly for new dispatchable generation and replacement tax base to be built in Pueblo, and has not got it.
Comanche Unit 3, the largest coal unit in Colorado, is scheduled to retire by the end of 2030. It has also been offline since August 2025 with a repair bill and a cost recovery fight still unresolved. Unit 1 has already retired and Unit 2's retirement has been extended more than once.
When Unit 3 closes, Pueblo County's tax receipts from the plant fall by roughly two thirds. County officials asked for replacement generation on the Comanche site and were told no. Their stated preference was a gas turbine or a small reactor, in Pueblo, producing power and tax base where the loss occurs.
Mendara's lead candidate is PuebloPlex, the former Pueblo Chemical Depot, now a quasi-governmental industrial redevelopment authority east of the city. The property carries the rail, road, water and industrial zoning of its former use, sits well away from residential density, and is in cooperative utility territory.
No agreement with PuebloPlex has been executed. PuebloPlex is our lead candidate site, not a signed counterparty.
Contact
For tenant enquiries, site and community questions.