Just outside of Abilene, a four million square foot complex is being built on just over a thousand acres of land.
The complex is home base for Stargate, part of a $500 billion nationwide buildout of AI infrastructure. This project is backed by OpenAI and Oracle and it’s expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Christopher Collins, a contributor to Texas Monthly, said there are a few reasons Stargate chose to build in Abilene.
“One is when you look at Abilene, we’re a mid-sized city in West/Central Texas. There’s no big cities around us,” he said. “We’re not a suburb of anything. And that means there’s a lot of wide open, undeveloped space. If you want to build a massive data center, that’s something you’re going to want.”
The area also has a lot of resources, including natural gas, and the ability to generate solar power and wind power.
“The third reason, which is very important, is that the City of Abilene and Taylor County, they both agreed to a lucrative tax agreement with the Stargate developers, evading 85% of the property taxes over 10 years,” he said. “That’s a lot of savings for a $3.5 billion project. So I’m sure that also had a significant role in their decision to come here.”
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Collins said reception of the project has been mixed. People involved in city government tend to be excited about it, but other folks are less sure.
“Some people are, I think they’re waiting to see, is this going to help us or not?” Collins said. “Certainly in the short term, there’s been a lot of sales tax revenues coming in. Those are up by double-digit margins at some points.
There’s 6,000 workers here, give or take. That number fluctuates, but they’re shopping, they’re buying groceries, they’re getting their hair cut, they’re doing all that sort of stuff.”
The complex will also create about 300 permanent jobs, Collins said, which is about as much as you’d get from a Walmart supercenter.
“The local economic development corporation says that they’re estimating a $4 billion economic impact over the next two decades, but they refuse to elaborate on how they came up with that figure, or what their methodology is.” he said. “So it’s hard to know if that may be wildly inflated.”
The project has also already caused disruption in the area, and Collins said some worry that will continue.
“Road conditions and traffic have definitely become sort of a nightmare for people who live in the immediate vicinity of where the project is, he said. “It’s drastically affecting their commute to work. There have been reports of traffic collisions, of vehicles being run off the road.”
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Locals are also worried about the noise the complex may produce once it’s operating, Collins said.
“They’re worried about pollution that may come from burning gas to power the thing,” he said. “Also how much water is this thing going to use? The developers say it won’t use a whole lot compared to other data centers, but it will still use some. And how much power is this going to use?”
Collins said he is curious to see how Stargate impacts the local economy, especially given the tax break the project received.
“Will this really turn out to be a good bet for the city of Abilene? In the past, we’ve had a pretty good track record of luring in industries and businesses and other things,” he said. “That’s really helped our economy and informed our city as well as our universities and things.
But we’ve also had some bets that haven’t paid off where we’ve put a lot of money and time into things that ended up where our pockets were empty at the end. So that’s what I’m gonna be looking for.”
