--- title: "The park that became a data centre" description: "A 14-word sentence in a 1999 deed has set a Texas retiree against the AI boom" author: "Albion Grey" published: 2026-09-26T10:00:30.290Z modified: 2026-09-26T18:02:18Z url: https://rews.cc/a/the-park-that-became-a-data-centre-b782f2 language: en tags: ["data-centers", "infrastructure", "land-use", "ai", "environment", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # The park that became a data centre *A 14-word sentence in a 1999 deed has set a Texas retiree against the AI boom* By Albion Grey · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-park-that-became-a-data-centre-b782f2 ## In brief - Pamela Griffin is fighting plans for a data centre on 87 acres near her Taylor, Texas home that she says were promised as parkland - A 1999 deed said the land was “to be held in trust for future use as a parkland by Williamson County”, language later sales omitted - The land passed through a foundation, a non-profit and the City of Taylor before its 2025 sale to Blueprint Data Centers’ parent for $10m - A county judge dismissed the siblings’ lawsuit in October 2025 for lack of standing; an appeals court is now considering the case - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating whether the original land-use language was legally changed or removed Every boom has its losers, and the artificial-intelligence boom is minting them in unlikely places. Pamela Griffin, a 58-year-old retired learning-centre director in Taylor, Texas, had planned to spend her retirement quietly, in the house her father built. Instead she has spent it attending public hearings, organising neighbours and fighting a lawsuit over 87 acres behind her home—land she was told, growing up, would one day become a park, and which is now slated to hold a data centre half a mile from her porch. The promise was more than folklore. The land belonged to the descendants of Howard Bland, Sr, a prominent Taylor businessman and state lawmaker of the late 19th century, whose family had watched children from the neighbouring Black community—including a young Ms Griffin—wander onto the property to retrieve stray baseballs and decided it should someday be a public park. In 1999 the Blands sold the 87 acres to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation for $10. The deed carried a line stating the land was “to be held in trust for future use as a parkland by Williamson County.” Those 14 words then vanished from the paperwork. In 2003 the acreage passed to a Williamson County parks non-profit for $10, and seven weeks later to the City of Taylor for another $10. In 2009 the city sold it to its own economic-development arm in exchange for $15,000 and 39 acres—16 of which, the city says, are meant to “act as buffer between the proposed data center and the nearest neighborhood.” In 2025 the remaining land went to the parent company of Blueprint Data Centers for $10m. The Blands’ language appears in the 1999 deed and in none of the subsequent ones; why it was dropped is unclear. The city’s position is brisk. Taylor was “unaware” of the Blands’ wishes when it bought the land in 2003, a spokesperson told CNN, and although the family intended a park, “no legally enforceable deed restriction was placed on the property. Because there was no deed restriction, his (land donor) wishes did not transfer with the deed.” Blueprint, its parent NCP Travis BPP Project LLC and the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation did not respond to CNN’s repeated requests for comment; CNN also sought the Williamson County non-profit and the two surviving Blands named in the 1999 deed. ## A homestead and a promise For Ms Griffin the fight is personal in a way that transcends zoning. Her grandmother worked as a maid and chopped and picked cotton in Taylor—once a cotton and cattle town—and, after the Fair Housing Act barred racial discrimination in housing, seized the chance to buy plots on the town’s south side for her eight children. Ms Griffin’s father built the family home and raised six children in it. “My daddy passed this land down to us and he told us to guard this land,” she says. “He said this will always be a homestead.” The neighbourhood’s attachment to green space was forged by its absence. In the 1970s parents kept children away from Fannie Robinson Park—the town’s first park for Black residents, dedicated in 1955 on a former city dump—after some developed rashes or fell ill. The empty lot behind the Griffin home became the informal playground, a place to chase baseballs or camp under the stars. The Blands, Ms Griffin says, “understood the community in a way others did not” and “was willing to help when nobody else was not.” The flyer she found on her door last year announced “Three 45,000 SF data centers coming to your backyard.” She did not then know what a data centre was. The approved plan, spanning 135,000 square feet, is one of more than 2,000 data centres in planning stages across America, according to Cleanview, a tracking firm. It would sandwich Taylor, a town of roughly 18,000 people some 25 miles outside Austin, between two pillars of the AI supply chain: a Samsung chip-fabrication plant to the north and server farms to the south. A separate 665-acre project called “Project Mustang” has stoked further worries, not least because it sits outside city limits, beyond Taylor’s regulatory reach; the developer sought annexation but withdrew its application this month. Residents fret about noise, water use and power shortages. Ms Griffin and her siblings sued last year to halt construction permanently, arguing the land should remain a park under the original deed. In October 2025 a Williamson County judge dismissed the case, ruling the siblings lack standing: they neither own the land nor have a direct financial stake in it. A Texas appeals court is now weighing the complaint. Separately, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney-general, has opened an investigation into whether the original language was legally changed or removed and whether it still carries force. “We all neighbors. We supposed to take care of each other,” Ms Griffin says. The legal odds are not obviously in her favour: deeds that shed their conditions as they change hands are an old story in Texas, and standing is a high fence to clear. But county clerks’ offices and an attorney-general’s inquiry are awkward places for a $10m land deal to be re-examined, whatever the outcome. Across America, the data-centre boom is colliding with the people who happen to live where the servers want to be. Taylor’s argument over 14 missing words will not be the last of its kind.