Residents oppose south side data center
The announcement Blueprint Data Centers, a $1 billion project, is set to be built at 1601 E. MLK Jr. Blvd. touched off a flurry of reactions from residents in the surrounding neighborhood.
With just about everything in place for the company to begin construction, the City Council held a public hearing for the final rezoning approval for the south Taylor project Thursday.
“That is going to be right behind my house. We just heard of it today,” Pam Griffin said.
The District 1 resident worries about the environmental health concerns associated with data centers, she told the council members.
“It’s going to cause a lot of problems in my neighborhood. We need you to vote against this. We don’t want it. We don’t want it in our backyard,” she said. “I’m pretty sure y’all don’t want it in your backyard. Why would you put it on our side, where the brown and the Black people live? That’s not right.”
A map shows the Blueprint Data Centers development (in yellow) and its proximity to Second Avenue and the surrounding neighborhoods. Image source: Taylor city documents
The data-center development has been in the works for more than a year, being discussed by city officials and developers under a code name.
Last August, the council and the Taylor Economic Development Corp. approved a 50% rebate on property taxes for 10 years on each of the three phases of construction.
In addition, the company will get a 50% rebate on local salesand- use tax collected on construction material purchases. Blueprint Data Centers purchased the land from the EDC in April.
Blueprint officials, who also are working on a smaller data center project in Georgetown, anticipate the Taylor center will eventually spend at least $1 billion on construction and equipment over the next 10 years.
Some residents living within 500 feet of the project were unaware of the initiative until neighbors went door-to-door to talk about it, and information was shared on social media.
Stories about the project, however, have been featured in local media including the Taylor Press.
Concerns were brought up online and at the council meeting about air quality, noise pollution, water usage, electromagnetic fields, multiple health concerns, fire hazards and environmentaljustice issues.
Because there is a 200-foot buffer of land owned by the EDC between the development and the neighborhood, residents were not notified of the upcoming data center project.
Shai Roos, interim development services director, gave the council a three-minute presentation on the project before the public hearing.
Mayor Dwayne Ariola told the audience even though it was an agenda item, council members would not be answering any of the public’s questions at that time.
“This is the first time that we’re (the council) going to hear this,” the mayor said. “We want to get briefed tonight on the pros and the cons — hear from the citizens and then we’ll let council decide.”
Council members directed city staff to schedule a town hall meeting to answer the community’s questions about the project. The vote to approving the rezoning is scheduled for the July 10 council session.
At Thursday’s meeting, neighbors also voiced concerns about water usage, but Yaerid Jacob, CEO of Blueprint Data Centers, said the site would use closedloop cooling, which recycles the water and minimizes usage.
“This project is probably a 30-plus year asset. We don’t want to suddenly not have water to do our actual data center work,” he said. “So we are looking at a closed-loop cooling system which hopefully has very minimal losses, so (a) very minimal draw on the actual water services.”
He added the only well use would be employees utilizing the toilet and kitchen.
The company worked with Oncor Electric Delivery Co. to locate an electric substation on the property. The data center is expected to use 30 megawatts of power to start and has plans to increase usage over time. Thirty megawatts is enough to power a small town for a day, equivalent to the amount used by 9,000 homes.
The size and scope of the project prompted Sarah Winters and others to comment about what they perceive as the city’s lack of environmental oversight of data centers and other industrial developments.
“What does the city plan to offer to District 1 in return for turning it into the city’s industrial corridor? We need a city government willing to serve all its districts, not just the ones with more money or lighter faces,” she said.
Councilman Kelly Cmerek, who also serves on the EDC board, defended the decision to bring the data center to District 1.
“We’ve looked at so many different potential users ... We’ve tried to give the land away and grant it to an employer. Every time we ever talked to anybody or looked at any project we thought about the people who live nearby. That was always part of the consideration,” Cmerek said. “My thought was a data center would be minimally invasive to the neighborhood, but I don’t know all the details. I’m not an expert.”
Cmerek noted he grew up in south Taylor behind a former factory.
“That was the loudest, clankiest place because they made picture frames and I grew up there. I lived there 18 years before I moved away, and it’s just something you get used to,” he said.
Newly minted Councilman Greg Redden, who represents District 1, said there is room on the 52-acre site to position the three 45,000-square-foot data center buildings farther from the residences. He also pointed out a planned 8-foot fence could be more efficient at buffering noise if it were taller.
“I’m appalled that they didn’t look just a little bit west and see all the neighborhoods that we have out there and talk to them. If the company wants to be a good neighbor, they have to talk to everybody,” Redden said.
Reporter Travis E. Poling contributed to this story.
In other business at City Hall:
• The City Council considered a resolution to issue certificates of obligation to fund street improvements, drainage and downtown surveillance cameras.
• Council members heard a presentation on the city’s duck population that included a public education initiative to curtail people feeding the birds and plans to humanely control the webfooted population. For more on these stories, see the July 2 e-edition of the Taylor Press.
SOURCE: City of Taylor
