A construction crew works on cable buses for a new DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
RED OAK — DataBank’s nearly 300-acre multibillion-dollar data center campus under construction in Red Oak is abuzz with activity.
The site, about 20 miles south of Dallas across from farmland, is planned to have eight two-story buildings, each of which will offer 200,000 square feet of data center space.
The Dallas Morning News recently toured the site on Batchler Road to see an example of how these data center projects that are popping up all across North Texas are being built at speed.
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Red Oak has become a hub for data centers with several companies, including Dallas-based DataBank, Compass Datacenters and Google, building in the city.
A new DataBank campus is being constructed in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
Read more: DataBank CEO: Dallas poised to be the nation’s leading location for data center capacity
“Red Oak is an ideal location because there is ample land with the required power and fiber connectivity infrastructure, which are the necessary ingredients for building data centers,” Jenny Gerson, DataBank’s senior director of sustainability, said. “Red Oak is also a short distance from Dallas, providing the population proximity for low-latency online connections.”
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Gerson added that it’s key for DataBank to be a good neighbor because it wants to support the local community.
The campus’ eight buildings — DFW9 through DFW16 — will all be 425,000 square feet with the same infrastructure.
About half of each building’s square footage is data center space and the remaining area will be dedicated office space with training and conference rooms and other amenities.
The first and second floors will have identical high-performance computing data halls but one will be air-cooled and the other will be liquid-cooled on a closed-loop system.
A construction crew works on water pipes in a liquid cooled data hall on an under construction DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. Aluminum pipes hang from the ceiling next to a mock tower on the left. The pipes would deliver cool water to data towers.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
Feed and return pipes used for a recirculated water system used to cool data halls are seen behind Bryan Jonnson who is working on air coolers on a DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
DataBank is working with general contractors Rogers-O’Brien Construction and Yates Construction on the first phase of the project. A typical workday has about 1,500 to 2,000 employees on site.
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Inside, workers feed and hang pipes, maneuver heavy equipment to move supplies and materials, and make frequent checks to test that everything’s coming together as planned.
Outside, they do the same.
It’s one massive coordinated effort involving a lot of logistics coming together, executives said.
Gerson said the workers are pivotal in the data center projects. Many of the employees are locals, she said, adding that their work on campus delivers economic value back to their families and community.
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“Construction jobs are vital because they are the ones laying the literal foundation and bedrock for modern digital technology,” Gerson said. “As we build more again, as a country, blue-collar jobs will play an indispensable role in propelling us all forward and making things happen. We hear much about AI replacing jobs. While we believe that fear is overstated, it is clear that AI will not replace construction workers or the tradespeople who will operate and maintain each data center.”
A construction crew works on water pipes, left, and cable buses for a new DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
A construction crew works on getting air chillers, left, and generators, right, installed and functioning for a new DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
The campus’ first phase includes DFW9 through DFW12, all of which will be occupied by an artificial intelligence company and a 400 megawatt substation that can deliver up to 300 megawatts of critical IT power.
Construction on DFW9 began last year and is expected to come online in August. After that, the next three data centers are scheduled to become operable every few months on an intentionally staggered timeline.
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The entire campus is planned to be completed in the third quarter of 2030, resulting in a combined 1.6 million square feet of data center space and 480 megawatts of critical power.
A construction crew works on ceiling grid for an air cooled data hall on an under construction DataBank campus in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
Data centers in North Texas
Dallas-Fort Worth has emerged as one of the world’s top data center markets due to a combination of factors, including its availability of land and strong workforce, relatively affordable electricity prices and ease of connecting to the power grid.
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The build-out of data centers and other large industrial projects has faced growing opposition throughout Texas and in Red Oak recently with concerns about water supplies, the reliability of the power grid and even the health of people and animals living nearby.
Proponents have said these new data centers are far more advanced than those of the ’90s and early 2000s, equipped with better technology that’s more mindful of how resources, including water and power, are utilized. Executives of multiple major companies have also preached about being good neighbors in the communities they’re building in, including investing in local infrastructure, creating jobs and funding school programs.
By the end of 2025, Texas had the second-most data center construction of any state as it continued to trail Virginia, known for its “Data Center Alley.”
Economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas recently cited “tremendous momentum” in AI investment and data center construction as the catalyst for construction employment growth increasing last year with an “even bigger boost” expected this year.
A new DataBank campus is under construction in Red Oak, Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza/The Dallas Morning News
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.