$1.2 billion 707-acre data center campus in Temple

[Neil Narayan]

A Denver data center developer plans to turn more than 700 acres into a $1.2 billion data center campus in an area emerging as a hub for the industry. Rowan also has a $900 million data center campus in Medina County near San Antonio, and officials held a groundbreaking for the project on Sept. 15.

The project is part of a wave of data centers proliferating throughout Central Texas. Commonly referred to as "the cloud," data centers are hubs for computer processing power used by many companies and industries. They add value to tax rolls because of the large amount of investment at the sites. However, the U.S. data center boom has drawn criticism based on a variety of factors, such as the amount of power and water the facilities use.

The ABJ has now identified more than 20 data center projects in the Austin area in recent years, which are expected to include at least $25 billion in capital investment — likely an undercount — spread across millions of square feet of building space, along with thousands of jobs, primarily in construction.

Temple, which is about 70 miles north of Austin and has a population north of 90,000 people, is emerging as its own hub. Meta executives said they are progressing well on their own $800 million-plus, hyper-scale data center campus, while Minnesota-based Oppidan Investment Co. is working on a $31 million data center.