Developers Plan One Of The Largest U.S. Data Center Campuses On 768 Acres In Texas

Provident Data Centers and American Real Estate Partners' PowerHouse Data Centers have formed a joint venture to build a data center campus near Dallas slated to be one of the largest such complexes in the United States.

Provident and AREP’s PowerHouse Data Centers plan to build the hyperscale-focused campus on 768 acres between Dallas and Fort Worth in Grand Prairie, Texas. The multi-phase project will initially leverage about 500 megawatts of committed power, with the potential to scale up to 1.8 gigawatts at full build-out, according to Provident.

Construction on the site — which sits north of Route 67 and close to Google’s data center complex in neighboring Midlothian, Texas — is set to begin in the second quarter of 2025, with power delivery secured for May 2026. While neither party in the joint venture shared their total investment in the project, Provident touted at least $5B in direct construction impact over the course of the multi-year build-out. 

The nearly 2 gigawatts of capacity planned for Grand Prairie would place the campus among the largest in both the booming DFW data center market and nationally, even as the data center sector is increasingly dominated by massive projects serving tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta.  

“We were motivated to form this partnership due to Provident’s extensive experience in large-scale infrastructure and deep Texas roots, combined with PowerHouse’s focus on hyperscale solutions,” Provident Principal Strategist Jack Backes said in an email to Bisnow. “This created a partnership uniquely positioned to deliver a facility that meets the growing needs of global hyperscalers with speed, scalability, and efficiency.”

The JV between Provident and PowerHouse brings together two firms pursuing aggressive growth in the hyperscale data center market.  

Dallas-based Provident’s data center footprint entails 50 buildings in six states, totaling 3.8 gigawatts of power. The firm’s portfolio is centered in Texas, with data centers in operation or being developed in seven cities across the state, according to the company’s website. 

Development plans include a seven-building data center campus in Burns Harbor, Indiana, which Provident first proposed in August. But Backes tells Bisnow its latest Texas project previews an upcoming push to expand its presence in the market, targeting the world’s largest tech firms.  

“This project is also part of Provident’s broader vision for hyperscale growth,” Backes said. “Provident is preparing to leverage its 30 years of experience to deliver future developments independently through vertical construction in the data center space.”

PowerHouse’s hyperscale expansion is already well underway. The Virginia-based company says it has 87 buildings and 25.5M SF in planning underway or completed, representing over 5.9 gigawatts of power across 6 U.S. markets. 

As with the planned campus in Grand Prairie, PowerHouse’s swollen development pipeline is being executed largely through joint ventures. 

The largest of these JVs, announced in August, is a partnership with fellow data center firm Chirisa and asset manager Blue Owl to build a series of data centers anchored by AI cloud provider CoreWeave that could ultimately deploy more than $5B. The JV’s initial buildout is slated for a campus near Richmond, Virginia, that could ultimately exceed a gigawatt of capacity, with further development expected in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky and Nevada. 

Less than a month later, PowerHouse unveiled a separate JV with investment management firm Town Lane. The partnership acquired a 122-acre site in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it plans to offer 300 megawatts of capacity across five buildings by 2027. 

An earlier development joint venture between AREP and investment firm Harrison Street formed in late 2021 has also fueled much of PowerHouse’s growth trajectory. This year, the two firms broke ground on both the first phase of an 800-megawatt campus in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and a 65-megawatt project in Reno, Nevada. The partners sold one of their co-developed data centers in Northern Virginia to CyrusOne last month.

The JV with Harrison Street has helped PowerHouse push into the DFW market, launching a 200-megawatt project on 50 acres in Irving, TX last spring.  

Amid a nationwide data center development boom, the DFW metroplex has remained one of the industry’s strongest growth markets. The region trails only Northern Virginia in leased critical IT Power with 776 megawatts, according to 451 Research. At the end of the second quarter of last year, JLL reported that Dallas ranked fourth in capacity planned or under construction with a pipeline exceeding 3000 megawatts. 

The data center industry’s growth across Texas has sparked growing concerns about the impact of gigawatt-scale campuses on the stability of the ERCOT power grid and power prices for consumers, with some politicians suggesting pumping the breaks on future development. But Provident’s Backes insists that the company’s project with PowerHouse in Grand Prairie is paired with energy infrastructure investments that, along with collaboration with utilities, will ensure these concerns don’t come to fruition.

“Our development is designed to enhance grid stability rather than strain it,” Backes said. “Provident has spent the past two years working closely with ERCOT and Oncor ensuring that the project not only avoids price increases for consumers but also strengthens grid resilience and reliability.”