$10B data center’s developers tout economic benefits; nearby cities have questions
This week, the developers behind a proposed $10 billion data center in southeast Fort Worth will return to the city to ask for another roughly 80 acres of land to be rezoned for the development, raising the project’s total footprint to nearly 500 acres.
One request, for roughly 38 acres, will go to the Fort Worth Zoning Commission at its meeting on Jan. 14. The land is on Anglin Circle and would be rezoned from two-family residential and agricultural use to a light industrial planned development.
The other request, which is headed to the Fort Worth City Council at its evening meeting on Jan. 13, is for 42 acres on Anglin Drive to be rezoned from agricultural use to standard light industrial use without a planned development attached.
The land rezoned for the data center so far is all within the city of Fort Worth, but it is bordered by the cities of Forest Hill to the north and Everman to the south and west. Lon Stephenson Road is a dividing line between the cities of Fort Worth and Forest Hill.
Some community members have criticized the project, and city leaders in nearby Forest Hill and Everman say they want clarity from the developer, energy company Black Mountain.
Black Mountain founder and CEO Rhett Bennett told the Star-Telegram that the data center, both in the construction and operational stages, will bring jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue to Fort Worth and Tarrant County.
Craig Spencer, Everman city manager, told the Star-Telegram that he wants to be supportive of the data center and the economic benefits it could bring Fort Worth and surrounding cities. But he has questions.
“Our big concern is that we have not had any meetings since the original rezone, and now there’s additional land being acquired, and we’re not quite sure why,” Spencer told the Star-Telegram.
In April 2025, representatives with the cities of Everman and Forest Hill met with Black Mountain to receive information about one of the zoning requests, according to a Bob Riley, a consultant working on behalf of Black Mountain.
In July, according to Riley, Black Mountain notified the city of Everman about another rezoning application that was approved by the Fort Worth City Council in September.
In the past few months, Spencer said, Everman hasn’t received much more information from Black Mountain. He said that the first time he heard that the current rezoning requests were heading to the City Council and Zoning Commission this week was when the Star-Telegram contacted him.
After hearing about it, Spencer said he would reach out to the City Council to try and get the rezoning discussion postponed.
“We’re not anti-development, and we’re not necessarily opposed to this development,” Spencer said. “But we do believe in strong communication and collaboration, particularly anytime there’s a development that is on our borders. If we were to develop something on the border of Fort Worth, I would absolutely communicate with the city of Fort Worth regarding this development, and we would seek their input. It does get frustrating when that doesn’t occur the other way around.”
Forest Hill mayor Stephanie Boardingham told the Star-Telegram that she, too, hasn’t heard much from Black Mountain over the past year as rezoning requests have moved forward.
“All of the new development that’s happened since those last meetings, with the acquiring of the new property and the way that the zoning appeared, and all of that has really thrown us like in a tailspin,” Boardingham said. “Now those questions that were answered now seem like they might not be the right answer anymore.”
Boardingham said a residential development is being built nearby in Forest Hill, along Lon Stephenson Drive near Park Avenue. She is concerned about increased power demand and flooding in areas with lots of concrete.
“[Black Mountain] felt that the new power grid and the expansion of the power grid on Anglin was going to be more than sufficient, not only for their project, but for all of the residential communities that surround it,” Forest Hill city planner Venus Wehle said.
“And I’m still very uneasy with that determination,” Boardingham added.
In answers to written questions from the Star-Telegram, Bennett, the Black Mountain CEO, emphasized the potential economic benefits of the data center, including increased property values, job growth and tax benefits.
“The development should generate approximately $30 million annually in additional tax revenue for the City of Fort Worth and Tarrant County,” Bennett wrote. “Dollars that can be used for schoolbooks, increased teacher salaries, and better pay for firefighters or more police officers.”
Those tax benefits were discussed at a Fort Worth City Council meeting on Sept. 30, where Bennett said that the data center could be “one of the largest economic developments in the history of Tarrant County.”
In that same presentation, Bennett touted the potential jobs created by the data center, telling the council that the “multi-year campus build out will sustain thousands of construction jobs and boost local skilled trades” as well as creating “hundreds of high-skill, high-wage full-time jobs in technical facility operations, logistics, and security” with average wages of more than $75,000.
Bennett told the Star-Telegram that Black Mountain will address residents’ concerns about the demand on power and water grids, as well as flooding, as part of the platting process for the project.
“Traffic, water, wastewater, and drainage studies are part of the platting process in which City of Fort Worth will manage,” Bennett wrote. “As with streets, any increase in infrastructure required by the development will be at the shared cost of the developer.”
Bennett also said that Black Mountain plans to meet with Forest Hill about improvements to Lon Stephenson Road during the platting process.
For now, Boardingham and Spencer said that they want Black Mountain to be a good partner, and they want their cities to get a share of the benefits such a project will bring to their backyard.
“What we want for our city is to be kept in the loop on what the development is,” Boardingham said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 4:43 PM.
