Irving City Council Greenlights Data Center On Land Owned By University Of Dallas

A data center campus will be built on land owned by the University of Dallas following approval by the Irving City Council.

Developer KDC worked with the university to rezone land north of State Highway 114 at Braniff Drive to pave the way for 770K SF of data center space, according to city documents.

The land was originally zoned for office or multifamily, but the university argued a data center would be the best and highest use for the land, given the market conditions.

KDC has developed more than one dozen data centers, including several in North Texas. The firm worked with Oncor to ensure surrounding transmission lines were updated to accommodate power capacity for hyperscale-level users.

The data center could generate an estimated $8.2M in tax revenue for Irving per year. The development is being designed by Corgan and is expected to be complete by early 2027.

Data center activity in North Texas has been explosive over the last several months as companies race to keep up with demand from cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency mining. 

NTT Data unveiled plans to spend $42M expanding facilities in Garland, while Compass Datacenters said it would also spend millions to bulk up its campus in Red Oak. Denver-based Stack Infrastructure plans to break ground on a six-building hub in Lancaster. Aligned Data Centers filed permits in late June to begin work on another 425K SF data center in Plano.

Nearly 386 megawatts of data center space were absorbed last year, almost seven times more than 2020, per Cushman & Wakefield. Less than 4% of space was vacant at the end of 2023.