Black Family Pushes Back Against Billion-Dollar Plan To Turn This Texas Community Into A Data Center – AfroTech
Land intended to be a park will now be home to a data center, prompting pushback from the nearby Texas community.
404 Media reports that Mr. Bland was a farmer who owned 87 acres of land in the city of Taylor, TX, and wanted it to be a parkland for children to play in, so it was placed in a public trust in 1999 for $10. Pamela Griffin and her family live in homes near the area, and it has also become a playground for their children.
“Back then, Black and brown people weren’t allowed to buy in the city limits of Taylor. So we had to buy on the outskirts … We used to play baseball back there and our balls used to go on his property and he’d see us play and he’d (Mr. Bland) throw the balls back to us and wave at us when he was on his tractor,” Griffin told the outlet. “One day he was talking to my dad […] and he said, ‘I see the kids don’t really have nowhere to play.’ He said, ‘I’m thinking about giving this land for parkland because these kids need somewhere to play.’”
In 2003, Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation sold the land to Williamson County Park Foundation, which sold it to the City of Taylor that same year, according to a timeline shared by the City of Taylor.
In 2008, the property was sold to the Taylor Economic Development Corp. in exchange for 39 acres in another area and $15,000. In 2025, the Taylor Economic Development Corporation board of directors sold the land to the Blueprint project, which will construct a data center.
The timeline also noted that there were no deed restrictions on the property.
That data center, called the Blueprint Projects Data Center, is projected to be 135,000 square feet, cost $1 billion, and feature three buildings, an electrical substation, backup power generators, and a closed-loop cooling system, according to information on the city’s website.
The proposed data center is 500 feet from Griffin’s home, per 404 Media. She also states that they didn’t even know what a data center was when local organizers visited her door in 2025, and she was unaware of any intention to build one on the land that had been used as a park. She said that prompted her and her siblings to research it, and they concluded it was “not good for the neighborhood.” She advocated against the data center at a city council meeting.
“We can’t afford it,” she said, according to 404 Media. “I got a lot of old people in our community that can’t afford to move.”
She is also concerned about the data center’s environmental impact and claims that concerns brought to the city council were not taken seriously, and that the data center developers would attempt to “minimize health risks.”
Carrie D’Anna with the Halt Taylor Data Center Coalition also does not approve of the construction of a data center. She told Fox 7 Austin that “industry doesn’t belong on that land.”
“It was never meant for that land; that land was deeded to be parkland for Taylor over 30 years ago, and that institutional knowledge got lost, and it got sold for $10 million for a data center,” she continued.
The city of Taylor said the data center will generate up to $30 million in additional revenue, which will reduce property taxes and be used to improve streets, sidewalks, and parks, and to benefit schools by increasing teacher wages and updating facilities.
The city has issued a statement acknowledging concerns about noise, light pollution, electromagnetic fields, and water and air pollution/contamination, and that the building will harm property values.
It said it will work with the developer to schedule a community conversation about the data center on July 21 at 7 p.m. at the Venue, 115 W 2nd Street.
