Company That Manufactures Data Center-Cooling Equipment Eyes Fort Worth Factory
In a region where temperatures regularly reach triple digits during the summer and the desire for data centers is just as hot, a Florida-based company is considering setting up a manufacturing plant to make equipment to cool these massive facilities.
Stellar Energy Americas Inc. is seeking an unspecified tax abatement from the city of Fort Worth for an $80M factory to manufacture cooling equipment used in data centers and similar facilities. The Jacksonville-based company's investment would include $45.5M in business personal property and $34M in real property improvements at the more than 1.1M SF industrial facility at 15060 Blue Mound Road in the AllianceTexas development, according to the Fort Worth Report.
Alliance Westport 24, as the site is named, was completed during the fourth quarter by AllianceTexas developer Hillwood as a spec building. The facility is located next to a 1.2M SF building being used by cable and wire company Southwire.
Stellar Energy did not immediately return Bisnow’s request for comment and specifics on the proposed tax abatement. A representative of the city of Fort Worth said additional details on the tax abatement will be unveiled during a presentation to the city council on Jan. 27.
In addition to its modular cooling systems for data centers, Stellar Energy also makes turbine inlet air chilling systems that are used by power companies, according to the Dallas Business Journal. It has around 700 employees.
Dallas-Fort Worth and Texas have become leaders in the data center market due to abundant land and affordable energy costs. DFW’s data center market has nearly tripled since 2020, and only Northern Virginia outpaced the more than 1,000 megawatts of capacity the region added during that time, according to JLL data published last summer.
Google is among the tech giants developing data centers in North Texas. The company plans to spend $880M to build a one-story data center at its existing campus in Midlothian.
Work on the 288K SF project on Railport Parkway is expected to finish in the first quarter of next year.
The Midlothian expansion is part of a $40B investment in Texas that Google announced in November. In addition to that project, the global technology company plans to develop a trio of new data centers in Armstrong and Haskell counties and expand its Red Oak campus.
The San Antonio-Austin market has grown by close to 500% since 2020, and some of the sector's biggest players have projects in the works in the area.
Microsoft filed plans this week to build a standalone data center of close to 200K SF at an estimated cost of $400M. HC Capital Partners and Herrmann Family Cos. will build a gas-powered data center campus on more than 1,500 acres about 60 miles south of San Antonio.
Amazon is also planning an $88M expansion of its San Antonio data center, adding 132K SF.
