Construction on the delayed Rellis data and research center at the Texas A&M University campus is set to begin in 2024. The size of the facility has also seemingly been rescoped.
According to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, works will commence on January 1, 2024, and are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
This timeline is significantly delayed compared to the original schedule set out when the project was announced in May 2021, after Brazos County awarded the project $9 million in tax breaks.
At the time, the leasing agreement for the 25 acres of land on the Texas A&M University System Rellis campus located at State Highway 21 and Rellis Parkway College Station required construction on the 225,000 sq ft (20,903 sqm) data center to commence by November 2021.
The date is not the only notable change to the project. In addition to kicking off over two years later than originally planned, the project details now describe the data center as a 45,875 sq ft (4,262 sqm) development.
The estimated cost of the development is listed as $10 million and will consist of a two-story tilt-wall shell building with the interior build-out to be permitted separately.
According to the Rellis Campus website, the facility is set to open in Q3 2024 and will offer a "state of the art" data center with colocation and managed cloud solutions. The data center will be designed to a Tier III standard and is being developed by Powers Brown Architects.
The changed timeline was approved in April 2022 after the winter storm Uri caused delays. In December 2022, Bryan Texas Utilities shared a document suggesting that it would need to provide more than 100 times the current demand for power at the Rellis Campus and was currently building a substation and transmission lines in part to serve the new data center.
In addition to serving as a data center, the facility will provide classroom space for students to give "real-world data center experience to students, faculty, and postgraduate research" and to offer technical workforce training.
A&M’s Rellis campus is on the former Bryan Air Base, a 2,000-acre World War II facility west of the main Texas A&M University campus.
