Developing a data center on the site would generate approximately $8.2 million in annual real estate and business personal property tax revenue for the city.
IRVING, Texas — Read this article and more North Texas business news from our partners at Dallas Business Journal.
The University of Dallas is partnering with a developer to build a data center hub near campus.
UD has provided more details about its planned 770,000-square-foot data center campus in Irving on Braniff Drive, north of State Route 114. The university is working with KDC, a Dallas-based developer known for large-scale commercial projects, to provide the initial data center space on a site of roughly 100,000 square meters.
Dallas architecture firm Kogan is leading the design on the project, with Terios serving as mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineers and Kimley Horn serving as civil engineer.
The Irving City Council on July 11 voted in favor of a rezoning request from the university and KDC to allow for the data center development.
In their zoning application, KDC and UD argued that the current office market and the increasing prevalence of remote work limit opportunities for new office development on the site, making it virtually undevelopable without rezoning.
In their application, the partners said developing a data center on the site would generate approximately $8.2 million in annual real estate and business personal property tax revenue for the city, have minimal impacts on traffic and create jobs.
“The site is an infill location located at the Dallas-Fort Worth transportation hub with direct access to multiple major freeways, DFW Airport and Love Field,” Eric Hage, KDC’s executive vice president of development, said in a statement. “Importantly, KDC has confirmed with Oncor that the surrounding power lines have recently been upgraded to provide ultra-large levels of power capacity to data center users. These factors, combined with extensive fiber optic access, make for a unique and premium data center campus.”
The campus will be developed in phases, with some buildings scheduled for completion as early as 2027.
The campus is the latest data center project underway in Irving: In April, the Irving City Council approved an incentive agreement with Edged Energy to develop a 165,000-square-foot facility at 505 N. Wildwood Dr.
Data center company QTS Realty Trust LLC also appears to be expanding its campus in the city. The Kansas-based company plans to add a two-story building to its 55-acre campus at 6300 Longhorn Dr., according to planning documents filed with the state.
It’s all part of a data-center construction boom in North Texas that’s attracted billions of dollars and gobbled up dozens of acres across the region. DFW is already the second-largest market in the country for data-center colocation (renting server capacity to other companies), with power capacity growing 32% year over year to 573 megawatts, according to a CBRE Group report. Data centers under construction across DFW are providing another 372 megawatts of power, and CBRE says 91.8% of that space is pre-leased.
The Irving data center development is not the only project KDC is working on in North Texas. Founded in 1989, KDC is a commercial real estate firm specializing in corporate office, data center and industrial development. The firm has developed 154 corporate built-to-suit office and industrial projects totaling more than 37 million square feet for clients such as FedEx, State Farm and JPMorgan Chase.
The company received approval July 8 from the Richardson City Council to add more apartments to CityLine, Richardson’s mixed-use campus.
