The Dallas Morning News recently toured DataBank’s nearly 300-acre Red Oak campus, offering readers an inside look at one of the largest data center construction projects currently underway in North Texas. The site, located about 20 miles south of Dallas on Batchler Road, is planned to include eight two-story buildings totaling 425,000 square feet each, with a 400-megawatt substation capable of delivering up to 300 megawatts of critical IT power.

DataBank Senior Director of Sustainability Jenny Gerson explains why Red Oak made sense as a location: ample land, available power and fiber connectivity, and proximity to Dallas for the low-latency connections enterprise and AI customers require. On a typical workday, between 1,500 and 2,000 workers are on site, with general contractors Rogers-O’Brien Construction and Yates Construction leading the first phase.

“Construction jobs are vital because they are the ones laying the literal foundation and bedrock for modern digital technology. As we build more again, as a country, blue-collar jobs will play an indispensable role in propelling us all forward and making things happen.”
— Jenny Gerson, Senior Director of Sustainability, DataBank

Each building’s design reflects the demands of modern AI workloads, with identical high-performance computing data halls on two floors — one air-cooled, the other liquid-cooled on a closed-loop system. The first phase covers buildings DFW9 through DFW12, all of which are fully leased to an AI company. DFW9 is expected to come online in August, with the remaining three buildings following on a staggered timeline.

Read the full article at The Dallas Morning News.