A 706-acre data center has been approved for development outside San Antonio, Texas.

Data center firm CloudBurst got the go-ahead for its data center project from the Guadalupe Commissioners Court on Tuesday, April 21, after local authorities approved a tax abatement worth $500 million and a development agreement for the facility.

CloudBurst is planning to invest $14.5 billion to build between 10 and 12 data center buildings on a land parcel located near the city of San Marcos between Center Point Road, Francis Harris Lane, and Huber Road, spanning a total of 3 million sq ft (278,709 sqm).

According to a presentation given at the April 21 Commissioners Court meeting, the 1.2GW campus will be built in three 400MW phases, with the first commencing in 2026 and finishing by 2027.

The project will be split across Hays County and Guadalupe County, and an initial 50MW phase of development has already broken ground and is set to go live in Q4 2026.

CloudBurst has said that the campus would use closed-loop cooling and get its power from behind-the-meter generation, and the company estimates that the project will provide around $120m in tax revenue annually for the community and the county.

Both the tax abatement and the development agreement were voted through – by a margin of one vote – to the consternation of attendees, the majority of whom spoke against the proposal.

Most expressed concern about the potential impact of the campus on the environment, and some worried that a data center would have adverse health effects.

A petition against the data center has gathered more than 1,200 signatures at time of writing.

Colorado-based CloudBurst Data Centers was founded in 2022. The company is also developing a 200MW campus in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.