Texas Data Center Boom Filling up Public Coffers

Texas has been enjoying a data center boom over the last two years or so. Companies from data center providers like Digital Realty Trust, RagingWire, or Aligned Data Centers to big internet players like Facebook are attracted to major Texas markets by their central US location, quickly growing population and workforce, a strong industry and public sector user base, relatively low energy costs, and a regulatory and tax environment that favors business.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle, the Houston market was fourth in the nation by the number of square feet of data center space under construction in 2015; Dallas was sixth; Austin and San Antonio together were in the ninth spot.

The New York Times covered the Texas data center boom this week, highlighting some of the biggest recent construction projects and pointing out how much of a money maker the data center industry has been for state and local tax coffers.

While data centers create relatively few jobs – nowhere near the amount of jobs factories bring – the amount of property and sales taxes governments collect from expensive equipment purchases their users make is well worth the tax breaks they are offered to lure them in.

“Each one of these data centers is a little gold mine cranking out wealth for the city,” John Jacobs, executive VP of the Richardson, Texas, chamber of commerce, told NYT.

Here is our coverage of the most recent data center construction projects in Texas:

Skybox Building Large in Dallas Market

Equinix to Open New Data Centers on Four Continents

RagingWire Takes Its Massive-Scale, Luxury-Amenities Data Center Model to Texas

Texas Colo with Efficient Data Center Cooling System Launched

$1B Facebook Data Center Project Underway in Texas

Read the full New York Times article on the Texas data center boom here.