Wind and Solar Land Leasing in Montgomery County, Missouri

The county has a permit process for this, because it has zoning to begin with

In a Missouri county without zoning, there's typically no dedicated review process for a large solar array beyond road-use agreements with the County Commission. Montgomery County is different: its zoning resolution specifically defines a "solar farm" as 20 or more contiguous acres of interconnected photovoltaic panels and requires a permit before one can be built. That means a lease here is followed by an actual county permitting step -- almost certainly involving the Planning & Zoning Commission -- rather than only a private negotiation between developer and landowner.

We could not confirm the specific procedural details of that permit (whether it's an administrative sign-off, a conditional-use hearing, or something else, and what standards it applies) from public sources during this research pass, since direct access to the county's own site and to the regional planning commission's hosted zoning documents was blocked during this review. Ask the Planning & Zoning office directly what the solar-farm permit process requires for a specific parcel before assuming a lease alone gets a project built.

Two real, named projects at different build stages

Ameren Missouri's Community Solar Center near New Florence is the older of the two: permitting began back in 2014, and the site has grown from an original build to roughly 30 acres and 6.5 MW, with a third facility of about 7 MW approved by the Missouri Public Service Commission in October 2024 and construction expected to start in spring 2025. This is a regulated-utility community-solar program, not a merchant developer leasing private land at scale, so it's a smaller-footprint, lower-drama project than the second one.

Apex Clean Energy's Wolf Creek Solar project outside Montgomery City is the larger story: a 100 MW facility with reported acreage ranging from about 882 to 1,920 acres depending on the source and project stage (the larger figure may reflect an earlier planning-stage footprint before final site design). As of late September 2025, local reporting described construction underway on a substation near the intersection of Elkhorn Creek and Vandiver roads, with that phase of work expected to wrap up around November. If you're evaluating land near this project -- whether as a potential participant in a future lease phase or simply as an adjacent landowner -- confirm the current build status and footprint directly with Apex Clean Energy or the county, since both have likely moved since this review.

Real community conflict, not universal enthusiasm

A February 2021 NPR/WAMU story, "Farm Or Solar Farm? A Fight Over Land Use Roils Montgomery County," documented genuine tension between landowners drawn to lease income and neighboring farmers and residents concerned about losing productive cropland and changing the character of the area. That conflict is part of why the county's Planning & Zoning Commission brought in a University of Missouri Extension agronomist to help develop siting and soil-management guidance specifically for solar development, rather than treating each project as a one-off. If you're a neighboring landowner rather than a lessor, that same zoning process that gives the county a permit to grant is also the venue where you'd have standing to raise concerns -- unlike in a non-zoned county, where there's typically no hearing to attend at all.

What to verify before treating a lease as bankable

• Whether a specific parcel is under an executed lease, an option agreement, or simply within a developer's stated area of interest -- these pay very differently and carry very different certainty of ever being built.
• What the county's own solar-farm permit actually requires for the parcel in question, and whether that permit has already been granted, is pending, or hasn't been applied for.
• The lease payment structure (upfront bonus versus ongoing per-acre or per-megawatt payments) and whether payments are contingent on the project reaching commercial operation.
• Decommissioning obligations and bonding at the end of the lease term, and who is responsible for panel and foundation removal.
• Current build status directly with the developer, since both named projects here (Ameren's New Florence expansion and Apex's Wolf Creek Solar) were mid-construction or newly approved as of this review and will have moved by the time you're evaluating a specific parcel.