Late last summer, Garland approved a deal with Digital Realty to develop a $1 billion data center campus on a 47.5-acre site located northeast of the intersection of Campbell Road and the President George Bush Turnpike. This week, Garland approved an expansion of the project that will increase Digital Realty’s financial investment by almost $400 million and add 16 acres to the original site.
Planning for the newly expanded 64-acre campus anticipates that it will be fully developed over a 20 year period and, once complete, will operate in excess of 160 megawatts of critical IT load. With this sizeable expansion, the Digital Realty project will maintain its position as the single largest private capital investment in Garland’s history.
Design of the first phase of the project is already underway and it is to be constructed and operational by late 2021. Further, the 1.4 million square foot data center campus will now be realized in five distinct phases and each will consist of approximately 280,000 square feet and operate at 32 megawatts of critical IT load. At buildout, the Digital Realty data center campus will be one of the largest in Dallas County.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Digital Reality maintains and operates over 26 million square feet of data colocation space in 205 data centers in over 32 global markets spanning 11 countries and four continents. Strong demand for their services continue as the shift from desktop-based enterprise software to more cloud-based applications continues to transform society’s ever evolving technological environment.
Garland is rapidly becoming North Texas’ hottest data center hub with long-term development commitments currently in excess of 240 megawatts and even more commercial investment and growth in the area expected over the next few years. “We’ve seen a tremendous amount of development activity in the area and, thus far, realized over $3 billion in investment commitments for Garland’s President George Bush Turnpike Corridor,” said David Gwin, Garland’s director of Economic Development.
Another multi-phased data center campus, located northwest of the new Digital Realty project, is being developed by RagingWire Data Centers, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based NTT Communications Corporation. In 2017, RagingWire Data Centers opened their first phase of the campus offering 232,000 square feet and 16 megawatts of critical IT load. Long-term plans at this campus include over 1 million square-feet of floor space in 4 separate phases and an ultimate operating capacity in excess of 80 megawatts of critical load.
Garland Power and Light has been a strong partner in recruiting both data center projects as they are able to provide reliable electricity at competitive rates and operational terms. GP&L is one of only a handful of municipally-owned electric utility providers in Texas and this provides Garland with a significant competitive advantage in securing this kind of investment.
“An advantageous location, aggressive public partner, access to quality infrastructure and a superior locally-owned and operated electricity provider have all served to realize this type of investment for the community. We look forward to many more exciting development announcements in the near future,” Gwin said.
Information provided by city of Garland.