10MW Data Center Planned for Oklahoma: What's Next?
A new 10MW data center proposal in Oklahoma sparks interest and concerns. What does this mean for the local economy? #DataCenter #Infrastructure
A vacant building in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, has a complicated past. It started as a carpet mill in 1969, was renovated in 2020 into one of the state's largest licensed indoor cannabis grow operations, and now sits empty at 1901 E. Boundary — waiting for its next chapter. If Buckley Bros Holdings LLC gets its way, that chapter involves server racks, cooling systems, and up to 10 megawatts of compute capacity.
The Florida-based family office investment firm is proposing to acquire the 200,000-square-foot facility and convert it into an 8–10MW data center. For a city of roughly 3,500 people that serves as the seat of Osage County, about 50 miles northwest of Tulsa, that's not a small proposition.
What Buckley Bros Is Actually Building
The numbers here are worth considering. At 200,000 square feet, this is a substantial physical footprint — comparable to many established regional data centers. The proposed 8–10MW capacity puts it in the "edge" or "regional" tier: not hyperscale by any stretch, but significant for a rural Oklahoma market.
What makes the site genuinely attractive isn't the building itself — it's what sits next to it. According to a former sales brochure for the property, the site is adjacent to a 24MW substation with 16MW of available capacity and a theoretical path to 50MW or more. For data center developers, pre-existing electrical infrastructure adjacent to a large industrial building is essentially the development equivalent of finding a house with great bones. You're not starting from scratch.
Buckley Bros appears to understand that, and they've been deliberate about scoping the project accordingly: their presentation explicitly states they would only use existing grid capacity and are not pursuing expansion to 50MW. That's a smart move politically. Asking a small municipal power authority for a 50MW commitment out of the gate would be a harder sell than working within what's already there.
Buckley Bros Holdings' portfolio, based on their LinkedIn presence, spans crypto mining, AI processing and model development, shipping, industrial construction, and aggregate mining. The Oklahoma data center proposal fits into a broader pattern of opportunistic infrastructure plays — identifying undervalued industrial assets and repositioning them for higher-value uses.
The Economic Case for Pawhuska
David Buckley, founder and CEO of Buckley Bros Holdings, framed it plainly to local press: "This data center project represents a significant opportunity to bring new jobs and investment to Pawhuska."
That's standard developer language, but the underlying economics aren't wrong. Data center construction — the actual build-out of a facility like this — generates significant short-term employment in electrical work, HVAC, structured cabling, and general contracting. Infrastructure development projects of this scale in rural markets can sustain hundreds of construction jobs over an 18-to-24-month build cycle.
The longer-term employment picture is more nuanced. Operational data centers at the 8–10MW tier typically run lean — facilities like this might employ 15 to 40 full-time staff depending on automation levels and service model. That's not a factory bringing 500 jobs to town, and anyone overselling that angle is doing the community a disservice.
What matters more for Pawhuska's fiscal picture is the property tax revenue and the ripple effect of a stable, high-value commercial tenant. An operational data center generates consistent tax revenue on both the real property and the equipment inside it — servers, networking gear, UPS systems — which can represent millions of dollars annually in a county with a modest tax base. For small municipalities, that kind of predictable revenue stream matters more than headline job numbers.
Why Locals Are Pushing Back
The city council meeting last week didn't produce a decision, and that outcome tells you something. Local residents showed up and called for a moratorium on data centers — not just this one, but the category.
That response might seem like reflexive resistance to change, but it's worth taking seriously. Communities across the country are increasingly aware that data centers consume enormous amounts of power and water while employing relatively few people, and some feel they're bearing the infrastructure burden without proportionate community benefit. The residents in Pawhuska aren't wrong to ask hard questions.
There's also a specific, unresolved issue that gives the opposition legitimate ground: local officials confirmed there is no guarantee yet from the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority that the power needed for this project would actually be available. That's not a minor administrative detail. It's the central question. A data center without confirmed power access isn't a data center — it's a real estate play.
Until Buckley Bros can produce a written commitment or formal agreement from the power authority, the city council is essentially being asked to approve a land sale based on a presentation, not a plan with secured infrastructure. That's a reasonable thing for elected officials to pump the brakes on.
The Infrastructure Question That Has to Get Answered
The 24MW substation adjacent to the property sounds promising, but substation proximity doesn't automatically mean available capacity. Utilities make their own calculations about load growth, reliability margins, and interconnection priorities — and a small municipal power authority serving a rural Oklahoma county operates with different constraints than an investor-owned utility in a major metro.
The 16MW of stated available capacity from the sales brochure is worth scrutinizing. That figure likely reflects what was available at a particular point in time, under a particular load scenario, calculated by whoever was trying to sell the property. It may or may not reflect what OMPA would actually commit to a new large commercial customer today.
This is where data center construction deals in secondary markets often stall. The site fundamentals look good on paper. The power authority isn't hostile, but they're cautious. The municipality wants the revenue but doesn't want to overpromise. Everyone's waiting for someone else to move first.
Buckley Bros needs to drive that conversation directly with OMPA — not as a prospective buyer, but as a project sponsor willing to fund the interconnection studies and engineering work needed to get a real answer. That's the move that separates developers who close deals from those who circulate presentations.
What Happens Next
The Pawhuska city council's failure to reach a decision last week isn't a rejection — it's a pause. The next 60 to 90 days will likely determine whether this project has real momentum or quietly fades.
Three things need to happen for Buckley Bros to move this forward. First, they need a formal power availability study or letter of intent from OMPA — something the city council can point to as evidence this isn't speculative. Second, they need a community engagement strategy that goes beyond a single council meeting, ideally one that addresses the jobs-versus-burden concern head-on with specifics. Third, the acquisition terms with the city need to close.
The moratorium call from residents is worth watching. If the council takes that request seriously and enacts one, even temporarily, this project effectively pauses until the political environment shifts. That's happened in markets from Texas to Virginia, where data center opposition has moved from fringe concern to legitimate policy debate.
Oklahoma hasn't seen that dynamic play out at scale yet. Whether Pawhuska becomes a cautionary tale or a model for how smaller cities handle data center proposals could depend entirely on how Buckley Bros manages the next few months. The building is there. The substation is there. The question is whether the trust-building work gets done.
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