A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
A Texas family donated land to the City of Taylor in 1999 with the stipulation that it be used as a public park. The city has since sold the land to a developer for a data center, sparking local frustration over broken promises.
Why it matters
This case highlights the tension between municipal development goals and the preservation of community-donated land for public use.
Almost 30 years ago a farming family deeded land to the City of Taylor, Texas, on the condition the city use it for a public park. For the nominal fee of $10, the farmers granted the 87 acres to a public trust in 1999. Taylor sold it to Blueprint, a data center developer, for $10 million in 2025. Now the land that was supposed to belong to the community will become a 135,000 square foot data center. Pamela Griffin and her family have owned homes near that land for generations. Griffin and her brothers and sisters played baseball on it, camped out on it, and then watched as their children and their children’s children did the same. Now a data center will be there, just 500 feet from Griffin’s home, nestled between a power substation and the nearby railroad tracks.
The article presents the facts of the land transfer and the community's perspective without inflammatory language.
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