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  • Fort Worth City Council hits ‘pause’ on $10 billion data center project

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    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of an additional 119 acres for inclusion in a development that includes a data center. The area is near Weston Gardens, bottom left, a family-owned botanical garden and event venue.

    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of additional land for inclusion in a development that includes a data center.


    Amanda McCoy

    amccoy@star-telegram.com

    The developer of a planned $10 billion data center in southeast Fort Worth has hit a speed bump in the rezoning of land for what could become one of the largest data center campuses in the metroplex.

    Black Mountain, a Fort Worth-based energy consortium, has successfully petitioned the city to rezone roughly 431 acres of land in the southeast corner of the city near Forest Hill and Everman.

    At the Fort Worth City Council meeting Feb. 10, Black Mountain was scheduled to ask the city to rezone another roughly 80 acres of land in two separate requests.

    One of those requests is for about 42 acres on the east side of Anglin Drive near the Forest Hill city line. That request was rescheduled after leaders in nearby cities asked for a discussion with council member Chris Nettles, who represents that part of Fort Worth. The other request, for about 38 acres east of Anglin Drive and north of Everman Kennedale Road, was previously approved by the Zoning Commission.

    Bob Riley, a consultant with Richardson-based Halff, who is working on behalf of Black Mountain, told council members that Black Mountain met with city leaders in Everman and Forest Hill on Feb. 4.

    After Riley spoke to the Fort Worth council members Feb. 10, Nettles and District 11 council member Jeanette Martinez said the council needs more information before it can approve the zoning cases.

    “I just don’t feel comfortable supporting this zoning case, because I don’t know enough about data centers and how concentration of those centers would impact our infrastructure and resources,” Martinez said.

    Nettles agreed with Martinez, and said he wants to see more information about Black Mountain’s plans.

    “I need real clarity on what the whole complex is going to look like, how many buildings, before we approve these last two lots,” Nettles said. Riley agreed to provide those details for the council.

    Mayor Mattie Parker told the council it will receive a report on data centers from city staff on March 3. The council approved a motion to postpone both zoning cases until its March 10 meeting.

    If these two requests are later approved, the city of Fort Worth will have approved the rezoning of over 500 acres for Black Mountain’s data center.

    Meta’s data center in north Fort Worth is on a 170-acre site. Another north Fort Worth data center, which was approved for earth grading work recently, will be on 107 acres.

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    Emily Holshouser

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Emily Holshouser is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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  • Developer behind $10 billion east Fort Worth data center requests more land — again

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    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of an additional 119 acres for inclusion in a development that includes a data center. The area is near Weston Gardens, bottom left, a family-owned botanical garden and event venue.

    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of an additional 119 acres for inclusion in a development that includes a data center. The area is near Weston Gardens, bottom left, a family-owned botanical garden and event venue.


    Amanda McCoy

    amccoy@star-telegram.com

    The developer behind a proposed data center in southeast Fort Worth has convinced the city to rezone more than 400 acres of land for the massive project.

    And as they go back to Fort Worth for even more land, a city in the shadow of the development has questions.

    In early 2025, Black Mountain Power — a subsidiary of a Fort Worth-based energy development company — began filing request after request to rezone hundreds of acres on multiple plots of land that sit among Fort Worth, Forest Hill, Arlington, and Kennedale to build a data center.

    After several successful attempts to get land rezoned for the data center, Black Mountain will return to the Fort Worth Zoning Commission at its meeting on Jan. 14 for another request to rezone roughly 38 acres at 4500 and 8512 Anglin Circle, according to the city of Fort Worth zoning cases website.

    The two plots of land up for rezoning are near Anglin Circle and Enon Avenue.

    That land, like much of what Black Mountain has requested rezoning for, is currently zoned for agricultural use. The developer is requesting that the city rezone the land for planned development and light industrial use.

    Although the data center project will sit within the city of Fort Worth, its impacts will spread to the surrounding cities.

    In Forest Hill, about 10 miles southeast of Fort Worth, Mayor Stephanie Boardingham gave a report to the City Council at its meeting on Jan. 6 about the status of the project.

    “We have expressed our concerns with a data center going in so close to Forest Hill, and what that would mean for use of electricity, noise pollution, and things of that nature,” Boardingham said. “This project is in Fort Worth. The most that we can do is express our concerns to these committees, and say that this is what our concerns for our residents are.”

    Some nearby residents, including Sue Weston — the owner of Weston Gardens in Bloom, a historic garden located on Anglin Drive — have expressed fierce opposition to the data center.

    After the Fort Worth Zoning Commission reviews Black Mountain’s rezoning request, it could go before the Fort Worth City Council at its meeting on Feb. 1 for final approval.

    Emily Holshouser

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Emily Holshouser is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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    Emily Holshouser

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  • More details emerge about $10 billion Fort Worth data center

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    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of an additional 119 acres for inclusion in a development that includes a data center. The area is near Weston Gardens, bottom left, a family-owned botanical garden and event venue.

    Developer Black Mountain is asking the Fort Worth City Council to approve rezoning of an additional 119 acres for inclusion in a development that includes a data center. The area is near Weston Gardens, bottom left, a family-owned botanical garden and event venue.


    Amanda McCoy

    amccoy@star-telegram.com

    Earlier this year, a group of men walked into small store located at Weston Gardens in east Fort Worth.

    They wanted to make the longtime owner, Sue Weston, an offer she couldn’t refuse — an offer that would add the historic garden center to a list of nearby homes and farms to be redeveloped into a mysterious project.

    “They said, ‘We’re an oil and gas company, and we’re just buying land out here.’ They didn’t say what it was for,” Weston said.

    Weston told the developers that there wasn’t a dollar amount they could offer that would convince her to sell.

    “I’m not going anywhere,” Weston said.

    The men represented a group of developers looking to turn a square-shaped area of land nestled between the cities of Fort Worth, Arlington, Forest Hill, and Kennedale into a data center. Since January, more than 400 acres have been rezoned to make way for the project — but developers aren’t done yet.

    All told, according to Bob Riley — a consultant hired by Black Mountain — the company is looking to rezone roughly 500 acres for the data center. That land will be turned into multiple buildings, which will be available to multiple tenants to use.

    Behind the proposal is Black Mountain Power, a subsidiary of a larger Fort Worth-based energy development company founded by Rhett Bennett in 2007. Bennett is an energy entrepreneur who sits on several Fort Worth boards. The company has subsidiaries dedicated to EV battery materials, mining, and sand mining in addition to oil and gas.

    In 2017, Black Mountain’s oil and gas subsidiary sold roughly 21,000 net surface acres of land to Marathon Oil for $700 million. That same subsidiary owns more than 54,000 acres of land in south Texas.

    Several homes in the data center’s footprint have been offered buyouts, according to Riley. He did not know how much money homeowners have been offered, or how many have been approached.

    Some homes in the area are now vacant, Weston said, after homeowners took the money.

    Black Mountain went before the Fort Worth Zoning Commission in December and asked the commission to recommend rezoning additional 42.06 acres from agricultural use to light industrial use. In January, Riley said, he will return to the commission to ask for another 40 acres of land.

    For now, that will be Black Mountain’s last request for rezoning, bringing the total proposed footprint for the data center to nearly 500 acres.

    The area where Black Mountain wants to build the data center is made up of quiet subdivisions, family farms, and businesses. The data center proposed there could be one of the largest in north Texas as demand for infrastructure to support artificial intelligence has soared.

    In November, Google announced a $40 billion investment to develop more data centers in Texas. In 2024, a 292-acre data center operated by the Dallas-based tech firm DataBank Holdings Ltd. opened in Red Oak.

    Earlier this year, the first phase of an 875-acre Oracle data center opened in Abilene as part of the $500 billion ‘Stargate’ program — a massive infrastructure push led by OpenAI to build data centers nationwide.

    Black Mountain declined a request for an interview, and the company had not answered written questions as of Monday evening.

    A spokesperson for the Fort Worth Zoning Commission referred questions to the City Council.

    Emily Holshouser

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Emily Holshouser is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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