Google has purchased land in Midlothian, about 25 miles southwest of Dallas, and plans to build a data center there.
Dallas Business Journal The company reported the deal on Tuesday, and a Google spokesperson confirmed the report to Data Center Knowledge.
Little is known about what Google plans to do with it: A spokesperson said the project is “still in the very early stages of planning.”
The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that the company has promised to bring at least 40 jobs and $500 million in investment to the city, Ellis County and the state of Texas over the next five years.
“While we don’t have a firm timeline for the site’s development, we want to ensure we have the option to expand further if there is business demand,” Andrew Silvestri, Google’s head of public policy and community relations for the central U.S., said in a statement.
In June, The Dallas News reported that Sharka LLC, believed to be a front company for a larger organization, had negotiated a deal approved by the Midlothian City Council to receive a 100 percent property tax abatement and an 85 percent improvement abatement over 10 years to help pay for the construction of a data center to be built in the city. Railport Business Park, A 1,600 acre business park in the Midlothian region.
In May, the Midlothian Mirror reported that the 800,000-sq.-ft. The building that had served as a Toys R Us distribution center was vacant. After the toy retailer went out of business. It is unclear if this is the property purchased by Google.
Google has been on a data center expansion spree in recent years. In February, the company broke ground on a $600 million, 60MW facility outside Clarksville, Tennessee, about an hour’s drive from Nashville, that the company said would bring more than 70 jobs to the area. Earlier that month, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, said the company would open five new data centers in the U.S. this year.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is the epicenter of a thriving data center market. For example, in February, Equinix has acquired the 1.6 million square foot Dallas Infomart. The company is building a $800 million facility with its customers in Fort Worth. A $1 billion data center campus owned by Facebook.
Google currently operates at least 24 data centers worldwide, 11 of which are in the United States.
