Developer behind proposed "Project Tomahawk" data center in North Texas town withdraws
Hours before the Prosper Town Council was set to discuss a potential data center, the developers behind the project withdrew the proposal, per an announcement from the town government.
According to the update, White Rose Partners – the company that proposed the "Project Tomahawk" center – withdrew both items scheduled for discussion at Tuesday evening's regular council meeting. Neither will thus be discussed as part of the agenda.
The town government noted that since White Rose Partners has withdrawn the items, the proposal for Project Tomahawk is now closed. Moving forward on a revised plan would require the developer to file a new application, which would include separate public notices and a new hearing before the Planning & Zoning Commission.
What would have Project Tomahawk entailed?
The proposed 225,000-square-foot data center would have cost around $580 million to build on roughly 37 acres at the intersection of Parvin Road and FM 1385. Project Tomahawk's proposal, which on Sept. 1 saw a 7-0 commission vote recommending denial, sought a zoning change and an amendment to the town's Future Land Use Plan.
Had the plan been approved, Project Tomahawk would have occupied about 20% of the 37-acre lot located near a planned future neighborhood. It would also have been located directly behind both a substation and a planned commercial development. The proposed plans called for a "living screen" to be built near the future Prosper Oaks development, located east of the proposed data center site.
The living screen would have expanded on an existing tree line with more plantings, including canopy trees and evergreen shrubs. An additional eight-foot wall was also proposed for installation at the rear of the building, both to screen and to provide a sound-damping mechanism for noise from generators.
A project narrative from White Rose Partners said the data center's purpose was focused on internet connectivity. Nothing in a previous agenda item suggested that the data center would be used specifically for artificial intelligence (AI). That previous agenda item also claimed that traffic impacts would be low and that Project Tomahawk's developer would have been responsible for all electrical upgrades required to meet the project's power needs. It also claimed the data center would have used less than half as much water as a single-family home.
Why did Project Tomahawk become controversial?
The construction of data centers, chiefly those for AI applications, has faced backlash across North Texas, making it a political flashpoint.
Gov. Greg Abbott has paused approving permits to build new data centers until state regulators can conduct a comprehensive audit on each proposed project, which will take months to complete. The governor previously developed what he calls guardrails and guidelines on how new data centers operate in the state.
A poll released by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that a majority of Texans oppose the construction of data centers in their communities. In a sample of 1,200 voters, 30% of respondents strongly or somewhat supported the construction of data centers in their community, while 57% strongly or somewhat opposed.