Black Mountain data center in southeast Fort Worth. Here's what to know

A $10 billion data center proposed by Fort Worth-based energy consortium Black Mountain has been working its way through city approvals for nearly a year, drawing pushback from residents and nearby city leaders. Here’s a refresher for southeast Fort Worth readers on where the project stands.

Here are key takeaways:

• The Fort Worth City Council delayed a vote on the 187-acre site plan less than three hours before its scheduled May 12 meeting, pushing the decision to June 23.
• Black Mountain has petitioned Fort Worth to rezone roughly 431 acres near Forest Hill and Everman, with the campus planned to include four buildings totaling 2.2 million square feet of enclosed space and a substation that would deliver power only to the data center.
• The Fort Worth Zoning Commission on April 8 unanimously recommended City Council approval of Black Mountain’s development amendment, which increased the allowed building height from 55 feet to 70 feet and added a 70-foot setback from Lon Stephenson Road.
• At a tense March 11 community meeting in Forest Hill, residents held up “No Black Mountain” signs and raised concerns about environmental racism, pollution and a lack of transparency from developers.
• Two additional rezoning requests covering roughly 80 acres have been repeatedly tabled, with the council postponing decisions again in March while awaiting a staff briefing on data center infrastructure.
• Black Mountain CEO Rhett Bennett has said the project will generate roughly $30 million annually in tax revenue for Fort Worth and Tarrant County and create hundreds of full-time jobs with average wages above $75,000.
• A separate entity called Fort Worth Power Core LLC, which lists the same address as Black Mountain and names Bennett as CEO, has filed paperwork with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to operate natural gas power plants to supply the data center.
• Leaders in neighboring Forest Hill and Everman have said they want more communication from Black Mountain, with Everman city manager Craig Spencer telling Fort Worth council member Chris Nettles he first learned of a zoning case from a reporter.
• Sue Weston, owner of the adjacent Weston Gardens nursery, has been a vocal opponent, telling reporters the developers initially approached her as “an oil and gas company” buying land without disclosing the data center plans.
• If the pending rezoning requests are approved, Fort Worth will have cleared more than 500 acres for the campus — larger than Meta’s 170-acre north Fort Worth data center site.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.