Prime Data Centers Planning $1.3B Campus Outside Austin

California-based developer Prime Data Centers is planning a major campus in a rural county outside of Austin. 

The proposed $1.3B project, first reported by the Austin Business Journal, would see a “turnkey” data center campus developed on 206 acres in Caldwell County, a largely rural area south of the city. While Austin is a fast-growing data center development market, this is the first major project proposed in Caldwell County. 

No additional details on the potential end tenant for the facility or planned power usage were included in filings with county officials, according to the Austin Business Journal. Caldwell County lawmakers are set to consider financial incentives for the project next month, among them three tax abatement agreements and a potential tax increment reinvestment zone for the site.

The project marks the second planned development in Texas for Prime, a firm partly backed by Macquarie Capital that has 2 gigawatts of capacity either in operation or under development in the U.S. and Europe, according to its website. The company also filed plans this month for a three-story, $22M data center in Dallas next to its existing facility there. 

While Prime’s proposed campus would be the first significant data center project in Caldwell County, the Austin metro area, particularly north of the city, is experiencing something of a data center boom. The region’s growing pipeline includes three developments from data center provider Skybox: a pair of projects with logistics giant Prologis in Austin and the nearby city of Hutto totaling 630 megawatts, as well as a facility in the town of Pflugerville. Social media giant Meta is building a data center campus in nearby Temple, Texas. 

The suburb of Round Rock has emerged as a hot spot for the data center industry. Amazon announced last year it is planning a major facility in the city, while Las Vegas-based Switch and Sabey Data Centers also have projects underway.