Buddy, I don't know how these data center stories keep turning out to be comically evil like this, but it's truly astonishing how much bad PR an industry can rack up in a short amount of time.
This story from Taylor, Texas, is next-level comic book villain stuff.
In reality, it's slightly more complicated than the sensational headlines. But not much more.
An old man with a family farm donates part of his property to build a park in Taylor, Texas.
The park never gets built and the property keeps getting passed off.
The city sees a chance to make a small fortune and sells it to a data center company.
From Gizmodo:
As reported by 404 Media, the City of Taylor, Texas, paid a paltry $10 in 1999 to accept a donation of almost 88 acres from the Bland family farm. According to documents reviewed by 404, the conditional language in the original deed granted the land to the 'Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a Texas non-profit corporation, to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas.'
But in the years since, ownership of the property kept changing hands. Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation granted it over to a different non-profit called the Williamson County Park Foundation in 2003 before they gave it to the City of Taylor outright a month later. So far, so good. But in 2008, the city sold the land for $15,000 to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation (TEDC). It sat unused until last year, when the TEDC sold the plot to the company currently developing the data center, Blueprint, for a cool $10 million.
This is government efficiency at work.
The land was gifted to the parks department and they did nothing with it. They gave it to a park foundation nonprofit who did nothing with it. They gave it to the city and the city did nothing with it. The city sold it to economic developers who have spent 18 years doing nothing with it.
Finally, someone knows what to do with it, and it's everyone's favorite villain of the day.
Locals who oppose the data center found out about the original property deed and how the wishes of the Bland Family were never fulfilled.
When news of the sale broke, locals were initially concerned for the usual reasons one might have when learning that a 135,000-square-foot facility β the sort now known to wreak havoc on small towns β is being built next door without their approval or input. But thanks to the sharp memory of Pamela Griffin, a City of Taylor resident who grew up playing in a lot next to the contested land, data center opponents were clued in to the deed's park clause and the legal leverage that might afford their fight ...
'I keep trying to tell everybody,' Griffin explained, 'if they start messing with deeds in Texas? Allowing deeds to be not upheld? What's going to happen to all of us?'
It's already crappy for the local officials to treat a gift to the people of the community with such disdain for nearly three decades.
The data center is just the sour cherry on top of a crap sundae.
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