The Pflugerville Community Development Corporation (PCDC) has announced that Arista Data Centers plans to build a $210 million data center campus with four to six buildings in Pflugerville, TX. The project is expected to bring at least 170 jobs to the community within 10 years—including 25 jobs within 4 years—each with at least $67,500 annual salary plus medical benefits.
Arista has committed to using commercially reasonable efforts to achieve LEED Silver certification for the facility, and to also use renewable energy as a power source for the campus.
“This project brings a large number of high-quality employment opportunities to our community, which is one of the most highly educated, trained and qualified in the state,” said PCDC Executive Director Floyd Akers. “In this case, Pflugerville and Arista are a perfect match because we want to attract promising, progressive, green-minded companies and Arista needed to locate in an area that offered deregulated electricity in a pro-business community.”
The 500,000-square-foot data center campus will be located behind the Mansions of Stone Hill, a new $40 million, 370-unit apartment complex on Town Center Drive. A new road, Pfluger Farm Lane, will be constructed by the City of Pflugerville. The timeline of the road construction is to be determined.
Incentive agreement In a joint meeting on June 12, the PCDC Board of Directors and the Pflugerville City Council approved a 380 agreement that includes incentives offered by both entities. The first $100 million spent by Arista in real and personal property value is fully taxable.
Incentive from the City of Pflugerville:
• a tax rebate of up to $350,000 (75 percent) on real and personal property tax investments in excess of $100 million
• construction of a road, Pfluger Farm Road, that leads to project site
• add a step-down transformer to the site to provide a redundant power source for
24x7x365 data center operations Incentive from the PCDC:
• $3,000 per job up to 25 jobs within four years, and an additional 145 jobs within 10 years (not to exceed $860,000). Annual salaries must be at least $67,500 and include medical benefits.
• up to $350,000 grant for the extension of fiber optic lines to the project site
Although Arista has committed to providing 25 jobs within four years, the company anticipates this number of jobs will be implemented on Day 1 of being in business upon completed construction.
Arista Data Centers is a site selection client of Angelou Economics. Angelos Angelou, principal executive officer of Angelou Economics, said that Pflugerville is an ideal location for Arista for four main reasons:
1. Pflugerville is in a deregulated electric market.
2. Pflugerville has a solid electric infrastructure with good proximity to dual feed electric
capability, which means electric lines tied to multiple substations.
3. Pflugerville has a strong telecom infrastructure with fiber providers already on site.
4. Pflugerville is a pro-business community that is open for new ventures.
The data center campus will house multiple tenants with Arista serving as the master developer.
Angelou said that Arista Data Centers is a ‘placeholder name’ for the owner of the company, which will sublease space to multiple data center companies.
“Data centers require a large capital investment,” Angelou said. “A project of this magnitude requires a master developer who has been in the business and is highly capable, and we have that in this project.”
A land purchase agreement for the project is underway and an announcement with the first tenant is expected in the next few weeks.
Arista Data Centers is working with the HP Critical Facilities Implementation service to have a single point of contact to design, construct and project manage the construction of the data center campus. Dallas-based StructureTone will construct the buildings.
