Massive Data Center Planned on 170 Acres

A 2.25-million-square-foot data center campus is set to transform 170 acres. Projects at this scale represent years of site selection, utility negotiation, and capital commitments that dwarf most real estate developments — and this one, planned for the northeast corner of East Pecos Road, is worth paying attention to.

Seven two-story buildings. 170 acres. That's the kind of footprint that reshapes a submarket.

What's Being Built — and Where It Fits

The project calls for seven two-story buildings totaling approximately 2,257,581 square feet on a 170-acre site. To put that in perspective, 2.25 million square feet is roughly three times the size of the Empire State Building's total floor area. This isn't a single-tenant colocation facility — it's a campus-scale infrastructure project designed for serious compute capacity.

The location at East Pecos Road places this development in a corridor that's been quietly accumulating data center interest for good reason: land availability, proximity to fiber corridors, and access to transmission infrastructure that smaller markets simply can't offer.

What separates this project from routine commercial development is the sheer density of infrastructure it demands — power, cooling, connectivity, and redundancy all engineered to coexist on a single contiguous site.

Two-story data center construction is a deliberate architectural choice worth noting. Single-story is simpler to cool and service, but land costs and site availability increasingly push developers toward vertical stacking — a design that requires more sophisticated mechanical systems but maximizes the return on expensive, permit-ready acreage.

The Technology and Environmental Stakes

Modern hyperscale and wholesale data center campuses at this scale aren't just warehouses full of servers. They're among the most power-intensive facilities ever built. A campus approaching 2.3 million square feet of raised-floor and support space could ultimately draw hundreds of megawatts of power at full buildout — enough electricity to serve tens of thousands of homes.

That power demand is exactly why clean energy integration has become non-negotiable for projects of this size. Major technology companies — the most likely tenants or owners of a campus like this — have made public commitments to 100% renewable energy matching. That means the data center development conversation now runs parallel to discussions about solar procurement, battery storage, and power purchase agreements.

The pressure isn't coming from regulators alone — it's coming from the hyperscalers themselves, who won't sign leases or buy land without a credible clean energy roadmap attached.

On the environmental side, water consumption for cooling is another flashpoint. Evaporative cooling systems that handle the thermal load of a multi-building campus can consume millions of gallons annually. Developers who get ahead of this — through air-side economization, closed-loop systems, or hybrid cooling — are the ones who clear permitting and community opposition faster. It's both a cost play and a reputational one.

What Investors Should Be Watching

Data center land development at this scale creates a layered opportunity set that most commercial real estate investors aren't fully equipped to evaluate. The raw land transaction is just the entry point.

Consider the infrastructure cascade that follows a project announcement like this: electrical substation upgrades, fiber conduit installation, road improvements, and water and sewer capacity expansion. Each of those creates its own investment surface — for contractors, for infrastructure funds, and for adjacent landowners who suddenly find their parcels in the path of development.

From a pure ROI standpoint, stabilized data center assets have consistently traded at cap rates below those of industrial or office products — often in the 4.5% to 6.5% range for institutional-quality assets — because the credit quality of hyperscale tenants and the long lease durations (10 to 20 years with extension options) justify compressed yields. A campus of this size, fully leased, could represent a multi-billion dollar asset at stabilization.

The market demand picture is straightforward: AI compute demand is driving data center absorption at a pace that has left supply consistently behind, and 170-acre sites with entitlements don't come available often.

For investors tracking this specific land development opportunity, the key variables are utility confirmation (has the power capacity been secured or is it still in queue?), permitting status, and the identity of the anchor tenant or owner. These three factors determine whether a project like this breaks ground in 18 months or sits in development purgatory for five years.

Local Infrastructure and Economic Impact

A project of this magnitude doesn't arrive quietly. The construction phase alone for a 2.25-million-square-foot campus typically generates thousands of direct construction jobs over a multi-year build-out. Electricians, ironworkers, mechanical contractors, and low-voltage specialists all work simultaneously across a site this large — and they need local housing, food, fuel, and services.

The longer-term employment picture for data centers is more complicated, and it's worth being honest about it. Once operational, a campus like this might employ a few hundred full-time workers in operations, security, and facilities management. That's not a manufacturing plant. But the indirect economic effect — through property tax revenue, utility revenue, and the supply chain that supports ongoing operations — tends to be substantial and durable.

Local governments have become increasingly sophisticated negotiators in these conversations. Incentive packages that were once rubber-stamped are now scrutinized more carefully, with municipalities trading tax abatements for commitments on local hiring, infrastructure investment, and community benefit agreements.

The infrastructure upgrade requirements that come with a project like this — substation capacity, road load ratings, and water infrastructure — often get built to a standard that benefits the broader community long after the data center is operational. That's the version of this story that tends to get undersold in project announcements.

Where Data Center Development Goes From Here

The 170-acre campus model reflects where the industry is heading: larger, more integrated, and increasingly built with phase flexibility in mind. Seven buildings on a single site allow a developer to deliver capacity in tranches — responding to tenant demand rather than betting the entire project on pre-leasing.

Emerging technologies are accelerating the design evolution. Liquid cooling — once a niche solution for high-performance computing — is becoming standard for AI workloads because GPU-dense servers generate heat at intensities that traditional air cooling can't handle economically. Campuses being designed today are already engineering for liquid cooling infrastructure at the building level, even if it's not deployed on day one.

The sustainability trajectory is equally clear. Projects that can demonstrate proximity to renewable generation, access to grid storage, and credible carbon accounting will attract better tenants at better economics. That's driving a convergence between data center development and clean energy infrastructure that is reshaping how both industries think about site selection and land acquisition.

The East Pecos Road project is a signal, not an outlier. As AI infrastructure demand continues to overwhelm available capacity in primary markets, secondary and tertiary locations with the right power and land characteristics will keep capturing projects that would have gone to Northern Virginia or Phoenix five years ago. The developers and investors who understand both the infrastructure requirements and the capital markets dynamics around these assets are the ones positioned to move when the next 170 acres hits the market.

Ready to explore investment opportunities in the data center market? Visit [InfraSale Marketplace](https://infrasale.com/marketplace) today!

[INTERNAL LINK: data center trends]

[INTERNAL LINK: clean energy integration]

[INTERNAL LINK: commercial real estate opportunities]