TAYLOR, Texas—The sun blazed down on the field stretching into the distance behind Pamela Griffin’s house in July, just as it has every summer for decades.
Her relatives have lived in the neighborhood since her grandmother bought the land that was outside of town. Back in the 1960s, racial minorities weren’t allowed to buy property in the city, she said.
But now those memories are likely to be bulldozed.
Last year, when local organizers knocked on Griffin’s door, she learned that the field bordering her property would be used for a data center.
“In this neighborhood, nobody had ever heard of a data center,” she told The Epoch Times.
Griffin began researching and didn’t like what she found.
She learned that dozens of acres where she had played and camped with her siblings as a girl were slated to be replaced by large, noisy industrial buildings.
Her neighbors were surprised and scared by the development, too, she said.
“A lot of them don’t have money. A lot of them are old people, handicapped people, low-income, single moms, single dads,” she said. “They can’t afford to move anywhere, and they’re upset, and they didn’t know how to fight.”
According to the city, the Bland family deeded 87 acres of land to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation in 1999 for use as a park for $10.
Eventually, the property was sold to the City of Taylor for $10. The city then transferred it to the Taylor Economic Development Corp. in 2009 in exchange for $15,000 and 39 acres elsewhere.
The corporation then sold the majority of the land in 2025 for $10 million to develop a data center. The $1 billion center, to be developed by Blueprint Data Centers, is projected to bring $30 million to the city’s coffers and another $20 million to schools, according to the city.
The city claims the provision stating that the property was to be held in trust for parkland was not a deed restriction—a claim that town activists and Griffin’s attorney have challenged.
Battling Big Data
Griffin and others said a lack of notice to residents near the parcel of land meant they never had a chance to contest the development.Her home sits about 500 feet from the field that the data center’s parent company bought. According to the city, it was only required to notify the 19 people who live within 200 feet of the development.
Activist Carrie D’Anna, who discovered the data center project by chance, told The Epoch Times that she left fliers in Griffin’s neighborhood about a year ago, urging people to attend a city council meeting to learn more.
That’s where Griffin met D’Anna for the first time, as people packed city hall. Griffin told city officials that she didn’t want the center behind her house. The council brushed off her concerns, she said.
The pair have been fighting the data center ever since.
Griffin family attorney Christopher Osborn said he suspects there would have been a public outcry sooner if the center’s development had been widely publicized.
“One of the excuses [the city uses] now is, ‘Well, we’re so far along in the process, we can’t stop now,’” Osborn told The Epoch Times.
Last July, Osborn filed a lawsuit in the Williamson County District Court seeking an injunction to enforce the parkland deed restriction.
However, the court dismissed the case on the grounds that the Griffin family didn’t have “standing,” meaning they didn’t have a personal stake in the matter or weren’t directly injured.
Osborn filed an appeal, which is now before the 15th Court of Appeals in Austin.
City Response
Daniel Seguin, Taylor’s executive director of community services, told The Epoch Times in an email that he’s not aware of anyone at the city or Taylor Economic Development Corp. knowing about the Bland family request to dedicate the land for a park until recently.“The city didn’t disregard the Bland family’s intentions. We didn’t know about the request because, without a formal deed restriction, the request did not transfer with ownership of the property,” he said.
Seguin said the city recently published proposed new data center regulations for public review and comment.
“We anticipate these new regulations will be considered by the Taylor City Council in September,” he said.
—Darlene McCormick Sanchez; Stacy Robinson
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