Jun 9, 2026
In 2026, when someone paves paradise, they don’t put up a parking lot, they put up a data center. That’s what’s happening in one Texas town, where a piece of farmland donated to the county — with the stipulation that it become a public park — is slated to become a 135,000 square foot data center, according to a report from 404 Media.
In 1999, the Bland family granted 87 acres of land to a public trust for $10, and in the deed was a condition that it be used for a public park, the report says.
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But the land “changed hands several times,” and then, in 2025, the City of Taylor, Texas, sold it to a data center developer for $10 million.
‘These kids need somewhere to play’
Pamela Griffin told 404 Media she and her family have lived near that piece of land for generations; her grandmother was the first to buy land there, and later her father did as well.
“Back then, Black and brown people weren’t allowed to buy in the city limits of Taylor. So we had to buy on the outskirts,” Griffin, who is Black, told 404 Media.
According to a report from Austin Free Press, Griffin’s neighborhood is home to “about 35 minority families,” and it is “one of the first areas in Taylor where Black and Hispanic families were allowed to buy residential lots after the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Most of the lots remain in the original families.”
Griffin said when she was a child, her father bought a vacant lot for her and her 10 siblings to play in, and that lot backed onto the Bland farmland. The farmer once told Griffin’s father that he was thinking of donating the land for a park: “One day he was talking to my dad […] and he said, ‘I see the kids don’t really have nowhere to play.’ He said, ‘I’m thinking about giving this land for parkland because these kids need somewhere to play,’” Griffin told 404 Media.
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Community opposes data center
Texas is already home to more than 300 operating data centers, according to the Texas Tribune, with more than 100 additional projects that are in planning or development stages, plus 142 that are currently under construction.
Texas cities — including San Marcos, Amarillo, College Station, Waco and Harlingen — have all seen the rise of grassroots movements asking their local officials to stop data center projects, the Texas Tribune reported.
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Recent opposition to data centers often includes concerns about demands on the energy grid and impacts on local water supplies.
In Taylor, the city council approved a deal for a data center project called Blueprint with BBP Projects LLC in 2024. Austin Free Press reported that BBP purchased 53 acres of industrially zoned land for $10 million, while the city “retained 15 acres between the site and a residential area as a buffer.”
In June 2025, Carrie D’Anna was one of the community members who organized to alert other residents about the data center. She posted flyers in the neighborhood about an upcoming city council meeting, the Austin Free Press reported.
Griffin told the Austin Free Press she and her neighbors “did not know about data centers,” until she saw one of D’Anna’s flyers.
“We were shocked that they would want to put that 500 feet behind houses that are low income,” Griffin said.
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Griffin spoke at the council meeting in June 2025, and there was a subsequent meeting in July 2025 where more community members showed up to ask the council to deny or postpone the project, but it passed unanimously, the Austin Free Press reported.
The fight continues
Griffin hasn’t stopped fighting the proposed data center on her doorstep.
With her knowledge that the land’s owner had gifted the tract to the city for use as a public park, activists went digging through land records and found the deed from 1999, which pledges the land to “Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a Texas non-profit corporation, to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas,” according to 404 Media.
Griffin and her family have hired a lawyer, and she’s determined to keep fighting to stop the data center, and see the land used for what its previous owner intended.
According to the 404 Media report, a lawsuit Griffin and four family members filed against the data center company was dismissed, and the judge also denied an injunction to halt construction while the case went through the appeals process. The family has filed an appeal with the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas, the report says.
“My family didn’t hire the lawyer to sue the company to get money,” Griffin told 404 Media. “We’re suing for the deed to build a park for this community.”
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Rebecca Payne has more than a decade of experience editing and producing both local and national daily newspapers. She's worked on the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Metro, Canada's National Observer, the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press.
