Jacinto City Pushes Back on Raeden's 50-Megawatt Data Center Near Homes

Jacinto City residents told the president of a company hoping to build the town's first data center exactly where they stand on the project Friday night: not welcome.

"We don't want you here," one woman said directly to Raeden President Jason Green during a town hall at the Jacinto City Town Center that ran from 6 to 9 p.m.

The mayor and city council called the meeting after weeks of behind-the-scenes maneuvering over the future of a former Budweiser bottling plant on Fidelity Street. Raeden, a data center developer, wants to convert the shuttered facility into what it calls an inference data center, a 50-megawatt operation housing computer equipment that supports artificial intelligence and other digital services. The property owner would partner with Raeden on the project.

City Manager Lon Squyres said officials learned about Raeden's interest in the site only about two weeks before the town hall, after previously working with a different company on redevelopment plans that appeared to be moving forward. Instead, Squyres said, the property owner began negotiating with Raeden. City officials were not told beforehand.

"Clearly our mayor and council are in opposition to this and we keep portraying it as a David and Goliath battle, and that's exactly what it is," Squyres said.

Jacinto City's council passed a resolution in July opposing data center construction in town, but the measure carries no legal weight. Mayor Diaz and the council have since unanimously reaffirmed their opposition to placing one at the Fidelity Street site, which sits about 350 feet from a residential neighborhood.

"We knew they were marketing it for a data center, and when that happened, our City Council and Mayor Diaz asked us to do a resolution saying you're not welcome here; we don't think it's a good fit here," Squyres said.

Resident Wayne Randle said his skepticism comes from what he has heard about data centers generally. "It just sounds like a bad idea and, you know, just going by what you hear about them it's probably not a good thing," he said.

Green, Raeden's president, told residents and city officials the company intends to limit the facility's effect on the neighborhood. He said the equipment would be encased in noise-dampening materials and that the facility's operating sound would fall below the site's current ambient noise level, which he put at 53 to 58 decibels with nothing running.

On water, Green said the plant would rely on a closed-loop cooling system that recycles about 200,000 gallons rather than drawing new supply daily. "It literally goes from cold to hot, cold to hot, cold to hot 'til the end time," he said. Raeden has also said the project would not raise residential power rates and that the company would be transparent with residents as the facility is built out and operated. The company points to more than 25 years of combined experience among its leadership in developing and running data centers.

City officials, while opposed, are preparing for the possibility that they cannot block the project. Squyres said the city has spent several weeks measuring ambient noise levels around the perimeter of the site to establish a baseline before any construction begins, information officials say they need to negotiate limits on the facility's operation.

"We're gonna craft a special use permit that will restrict virtually every aspect of their business as it relates to the impact it's going to have on the community," Squyres said. He said that permit would include noise limits, emissions monitoring and a requirement that Raeden post a bond rather than simply pay fines if it violates conditions.

Green pushed back on the framing of those conditions as restrictions. "I don't actually view them as restrictions," he said. "What I think that they're doing is, and I'm not trying to be coy about this, they're holding us accountable for things that we do anyway."

Data center construction is accelerating across Texas to meet demand tied to artificial intelligence. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered audits of up to 300 projects, most of them data centers, and halted new data center approvals in the state until those reviews are complete.

Raeden is still finalizing details of the Jacinto City project, including which client would ultimately install and operate computers inside the building, and is working with the property owner and the local utility on the arrangement. The company said it hopes to begin redevelopment work at the Fidelity Street site as early as October 2026 and have the facility running by March 2027.

Squyres said the city plans to use what it learned from Friday's town hall, along with its noise data, to shape the special use permit terms it would seek to impose if the project advances. No date has been set for a council vote on that permit.