Hutto City Council approved a specific-use permit during a Dec. 5 meeting to allow for a data center on Innovation Boulevard.

The gist

Council’s approval of the permit allows the developer, Ironwood Realty Partners, to move forward with plans for a roughly 180,000-square-foot data center, located near the corner of Hwy. 79 and SH 130.

Amanda Brown, of HD Brown Consulting, said the project is in the early stages but expects the facility to be an approximately $500 million investment to the Ironwood property, which would generate tax benefits to the city. It’s still unclear how many employees the new data center would staff, but Brown said it could be anywhere from 15-30 employees.

Council members shared concerns about the possible impact to residents in the area, specifically whether the project would necessitate the construction of power lines to the facility. However, Brown said multiple routes from a nearby substation are already in place and does not expect the need to build new lines over residential communities.

“I think this is a great place to have a low employee count, high-value item that will be built,” Mayor Mike Snyder said. “It will look good and provide tax revenue, but it won’t have the impacts that a lot of the industrial uses tend to have.”

What else?

The latest approval follows a wave of recent data center development in the region.

Last month, Round Rock City Council approved zoning for a potential new data center. Meanwhile, Sabey Data Centers in Round Rock announced plans for a new supercomputer to come online at its facility.

Additionally, the city of Taylor and the Taylor Economic Development Corporation announced this summer that a deal was struck with BPP Projects to build a $225 million data center.