The Irving City Council has approved a plan to rezone dozens of acres owned by the University of Dallas for data center use.
The Catholic liberal arts university has partnered with Dallas commercial real estate developer KDC to build a data center campus to tap into demand for big data and artificial intelligence across the region.
The land, located off State Route 114 at Braniff Drive, was originally designated for office or multifamily use, but UT Dallas determined that building either product is not economically feasible under current market conditions.
Data center development became a prominent use.
The zoning application tentatively introduces a plan for approximately 770,000 square feet of data center space on a 67.3-acre site across the highway from the university’s main campus.
The data center will be built low to the ground so as not to disrupt the atmosphere of the adjacent Cistercian monastery and Cistercian preparatory school, and will add millions of dollars in taxable value to the currently tax-exempt land.
“The University of Dallas is deeply grateful for the City Council’s fair consideration and ultimate support of our recent zoning application,” UT President Jonathan J. Stanford said in a statement. “The University is proud to partner with KDC, with their extensive experience in Irving and the company’s national data center portfolio. It is heartening to see the mutual trust between the University, KDC and the city.”
KDC, which is currently developing a new regional location for Wells Fargo in Irving, confirmed with power supply utility Oncor that the power lines around the site were recently upgraded to support extra-large levels of power capacity.
“KDC has developed more than a dozen significant data center projects in our 35-year history, and we are excited to partner with the University of Dallas to transform their campus into a world-class data center campus,” said Steve Van Amburgh, CEO of KDC.
Dallas-based architecture firm Kogan is leading the project’s design, with Terios serving as engineer and Kimley Horn serving as civil engineer.
Currently in the design phase, the development is scheduled for completion in early 2027.
