Colorado Developer Secures $3B For Data Center Campus North Of Austin

The city of Temple is getting a new data center campus.

Rowan Digital Infrastructure, a Colorado-based developer of sustainable, hyperscale data centers, has obtained $3B in debt financing to back the build-out of a 300-megawatt campus in Temple, a city about 70 miles north of Austin.

Rowan, known for its efforts in building energy-efficient centers, said the funding brings the total amount secured under its Green Finance Framework to $4.4B in the past year, according to a Tuesday press release.

The project is the first of three planned campuses in Temple, with construction expected to be complete next year, the Austin Business Journal reported. Officials have said the project is expected to span 1M SF.

Rowan got final approval last year from the Temple City Council to annex and zone the land for “Project Temple,” a 707-acre campus located near the intersection of Bob White Road and Lorraine Avenue, according to ABJ.

Central Texas has been a hot spot for data center development. Developers have been drawn to the region due to its inexpensive land and natural gas supply, The Texas Tribune reports. 

In Temple alone, Meta is progressing on its $800M hyperscale campus, and Oppidan Investment Co. is planning to build a $31M center. Bloom Energy predicts that Texas will become the country’s leading data center market within the next three years.

But some Temple-area residents are opposed to the build-out of Rowan’s first center and have sought to remove some city leaders from office over it. Residents have cited intensive water and energy usage, noise pollution, and displacement as just a few of the potential negative impacts data centers have on communities.

Rowan has stated that all of its projects use closed-loop systems, which limit water waste. Initial fills will be around 1 million to 2 million gallons, ABJ reports, and Rowan projects it will use about 4,000 gallons per day.

This is not Rowan’s first time working in the city of Temple. The developer opened its 35-acre Moriah Data Center, next to the Project Temple site, in 2023. It started converting it into a warehouse in January to support operations for the new project.

Aside from its Temple projects, Rowan has a $900M data center campus in the works near San Antonio.