New D-FW Data Centers Pump Up Construction Spending
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Data centers aren’t the sexiest kind of real estate out there, but it’s hard to decouple that part of the industrial sector from the North Texas building boom.
They’re not just a driver of the coming (or ongoing) AI revolution; they’re a big driver of construction spending, especially in metros like D-FW and northern Virginia.
On Monday, the digital infrastructure firm DataBank filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for a two-story, 425,000-square-foot data center with an office component in Red Oak. The project is being valued at $325 million in new construction. Once completed, this data center will make 13 for the company in the Metroplex, which already has operations spanning 1.27 million square feet with a capacity of 310.2 megawatts.
“The need for these data centers is accelerating,” said Ari Rastegar, founder and CEO of the CRE investment firm Rastegar Capital. “Without question, it’s absolutely insatiable because of the needs that Grok has, that Google’s Gemini has, obviously OpenAI.”
He told CandysDirt.com that the Lone Star State is uniquely situated to meet the growing tech infrastructure needs of the industry. While data centers have pretty much been around as long as computers themselves, the energy- and land-intensive demands of modern tech infrastructure have increased exponentially alongside advances in cloud computing and AI. And, of course, Texas has a lot of land and a robust energy sector.
“We have the ability to scale this out, and it’s really becoming ground zero,” Rastegar said. “We have all the necessary things that are actually needed to make this possible from a construction standpoint.”
Last month, the company Prime Data Centers marked the next phase of work on its new 96,796-square-foot multi-level data center in Dallas. Adding to the $22 million in new construction, the next stage comprises an estimated $47.5 million for administrative, data hall, and infrastructure construction and roof and site enhancements for four generators, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
It’s all adding up. Also in Dallas, you’ve got an $836 million project on Mockingbird Lane by California-based Equinix Inc., its ninth data center in the D-FW. In fact, a CBRE report projects D-FW’s data center market will double in size by the end of 2026 when taking into account recently completed projects and those currently under construction.
“You have [Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman saying he’s going to invest between $600 billion and $1 trillion in the United States, and that’s mostly around this type of technological innovation,” Rastegar said. “And these are serious numbers. You add them all up — between what Google is saying, what Meta is saying, etc — you’re talking about almost $4 trillion of infrastructure being committed nationally to build out these things.”
