On Tuesday, the Fort Worth City Council approved an incentive agreement for a proposed 110-acre data center site in the AllianceTexas area in north Fort Worth.
Since the project was first added to the agenda a few weeks back, rumors have swirled that the company planning the data center is social media giant Facebook. But city and economic development officials, citing nondisclosure agreements, have remained mum.
On city documents, the company is listed as Winner LLC. But the Dallas Morning News, citing documents filed with the state, says the company is actually Facebook. Facebook has been adding data centers both domestically and overseas for the past several years to support its 890 million daily active users.
Robert Sturns, economic & business development manager for the city, said Winner LLC could build up to three 250,00-square-foot data centers at a 150-acre site at the northeast corner of Park Vista and Highway 170. The company is considering Fort Worth and an out-of-state location, he said. There are several other data centers in the same area.
The incentive agreement calls for the company to receive $146.7 million in rebates over 20 years from real and business personal property taxes and a franchise fee with Oncor. The city would gain $48.6 million over 20 years. The incentive agreement is a potential determining factor in whether the company locates here, according to Sturns.
The project would come in three phases, with the first phase being an investment of $250 million in the initial data center and equipment by the end of 2017.