What Westlake's Data Center Fight Reveals About Buying Next to Open Land

Kevin Myers can see the future of his backyard through a gap in his own fence. On the other side of a strip of barbed wire sits 87.96 acres of pasture that, as of this month, is no longer just pasture. It is the site of the Circle T Data Center, a four-building campus with roughly 1.1 million square feet of data center buildings inside a total development footprint of 3.83 million square feet along U.S. Highway 377.

Myers lives in Keller's Marshall Ridge neighborhood, on Llano Court, about 506 feet from where the nearest building will stand according to the site plan presented at Westlake's August 4, 2026 hearing. He and many of his neighbors found out about the project from a Facebook post the Town of Westlake shared the week before that meeting. For anyone shopping for a home near the edge of a fast-growing DFW suburb, that sequence, quiet acreage, sudden announcement, packed hearing, is worth understanding before falling for a lot that backs to open land.

The Zoning Was Set Before the Fence Went Up

The most important fact in the Circle T story has nothing to do with data centers specifically. It is that the land was already zoned for this. Westlake has said the parcel has carried commercial and industrial zoning since 1998, under what the town now designates Planned Development PD-3-8. That classification predates almost every home currently standing near it, a history the town lays out on its own project information page.

The Keller side of the border tells the opposite story. The land that became Marshall Ridge was itself zoned commercial until Keller's city council rezoned it to residential in 2006 through Ordinance 1309. Nine years later, in 2015, Keller's council passed Ordinance 1742, converting more of that same industrial-commercial land to residential and adding fifteen more homes directly along the fence line, the same fence line Myers now looks through, according to reporting on the zoning history.

Two governments made two very different bets on the same fence line. Keller decided the land nearby was safe enough to build fifteen more houses against. Westlake never changed what it had zoned that land for in the first place. Both decisions were legal and both were public, and neither city needed the other's approval to make its own call. That is the part a lot of buyers never think to check: the zoning on the parcel next door has no obligation to match the zoning on the parcel they are buying.

The Math That Makes This Worth Fighting For

Westlake did not approve this because officials enjoy four-hour public hearings. The town's own figures put the data center's tax contribution at roughly $5 million a year for its first decade, rising to about $7 million a year after that, an increase the town projects at close to 14 percent of annual revenue. Town leaders have said this expansion of the commercial tax base reduces reliance on residential property taxes, meaning homeowners who never see the buildings from their own yard are meant to benefit from a lighter tax bill funded by land they may never set foot on.

That is the trade every small, high-value Texas town is making, usually without a hearing loud enough to notice. A commercial or industrial anchor inside town limits lowers what residents pay directly out of pocket. The same zoning that keeps a homeowner's tax bill manageable is often the zoning that, decades later, puts an 87-acre industrial campus within eyeshot of somebody's fence.

The developer, PowerHouse Data Centers, and the town have committed to mitigation beyond what the zoning strictly required: a buffer of roughly 220 feet along the property's southern edge, a 75-foot buffer along the highway, close to 4,000 new trees and shrubs, and a noise ceiling of 56 decibels during the day and 49 at night, which the town describes as comparable to a household refrigerator. The facility is expected to employ around 75 people once operating, drawing power from a new Oncor substation built to supply 300 of its 350 available megawatts, with the remaining capacity held in reserve for future use inside Westlake's own system.

What the Public Hearing Actually Decided

The August 4 vote is where this story becomes useful for anyone evaluating land near an open parcel anywhere in DFW. Town staff were explicit that the Planning and Zoning Commission was not voting on whether a data center should be allowed on that property. Under the existing PD-3-8 zoning, a data center was already a permitted use. The commission's only legal task was confirming the site plan complied with the development standards in Town Ordinance 307, covering setbacks, buffers, drainage, and architecture. Staff concluded the plan met or exceeded every applicable standard, which left commissioners with no legal basis to deny it even if they had wanted to, a distinction NBC 5 DFW's coverage of the vote laid out clearly.

That distinction, use versus site plan, is the one that catches buyers off guard years after closing. A hearing you can attend and speak at is often deciding how something gets built, not whether it gets built at all. The decision on whether it can be built usually happened in a zoning ordinance passed years or decades earlier, with far less attention than the eventual construction hearing draws.

There is a sharper version of the same dynamic buried in this story. Former Westlake Planning and Zoning commissioner Linda Bjorn told the August 4 hearing she had raised questions about the project's water and electrical usage back in December 2024, when it first came before the commission as one of several potential uses for the site. She said Mayor Kim Greaves called her the night before a follow-up meeting in January 2025 to remove her from the commission, and that no public agenda item or minutes document that removal. Whatever a reader makes of that account, it points to the same lesson from a different direction: a great deal of what determines a property's future gets settled well before the hearing most residents eventually show up to.

What This Means If You're Comparing Lots Near Open Land

None of this means every quiet acre bordering a North Texas neighborhood is destined for industrial use. It means the current appearance of a parcel tells you nothing about what it is legally allowed to become. Before writing an offer on a home that backs to pasture, a greenbelt, or any lightly developed tract, a few questions are worth asking well before the option period runs out.

• What is the actual zoning classification of the adjoining parcel, not just its current use today.
• Is that classification a Planned Development, and if so, which uses are permitted by right, meaning without a fresh public vote to activate them.
• How old is that zoning designation, and has the parcel changed ownership or been re-platted recently.
• Has the municipality signaled, through its own economic development materials or council minutes, an interest in expanding its commercial tax base near your target property.

A pasture with commercial zoning underneath it is a different asset than a pasture zoned residential or held as permanent open space, even when the two look identical from the road today. The Circle T project did not violate anyone's zoning. It fulfilled zoning that was already twenty-eight years old.

Westlake remains one of the most sought-after addresses in North Texas, and this project will not change that fact. What it changes is how a careful buyer should read a lot line. Understanding what sits behind a fence, legally rather than visually, is now part of due diligence in this market rather than an afterthought.

If you are comparing acreage or estate lots across Colleyville, Southlake, or Westlake and want a second set of eyes on what the zoning underneath a property actually allows, Sarah Gunnip can help you read the fine print before you fall for the view. Request a complimentary home valuation and tailored marketing plan to start the conversation.