Town hall in Westlake does not usually fill to capacity. On August 4, it did. Residents from both sides of the Westlake-Keller line spilled into the hallway before the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting even started, and public comment and closed-session deliberation together ran nearly four hours before commissioners approved the site plan. By the time the vote came, most of the room had heard the same thing they came in believing: that Westlake was deciding whether a data center belongs next to their neighborhoods.
That is not quite what happened, and it is not quite what happens today either. The Westlake Town Council holds a special meeting this afternoon, August 17, at 4 p.m. to vote on a development agreement for the Circle T Data Center. But the question of whether the project can occupy the land at 13580 Denton Highway was settled well before anyone showed up with a sign. Understanding why changes how you should read everything that happens this afternoon.
The Vote Nobody Is Actually Casting
At the Aug. 4 hearing, an executive from American Real Estate Partners, the parent company behind developer PowerHouse, told commissioners that the land had been zoned commercial-industrial years before Westlake updated its development code. That detail matters more than the size of the crowd. Because the zoning predates the current code, the first data center building on the site is permitted by right. Any additional buildings beyond the first would require a specific use permit, giving the town more leverage over expansion later, but the initial structure does not need council permission to exist.
That distinction matters for anyone trying to follow today's meeting from home. The council votes on the development agreement, the legally binding document covering infrastructure, architecture, and buffer requirements, not on whether the data center is allowed to sit on that parcel at all. Keller Mayor Ross McMullin, whose city borders the site but has no jurisdiction over it, has continued pressing Westlake on setbacks and buffer compliance precisely because the underlying by-right question was already closed. It was answered by a zoning map, not by a public hearing.
That distinction is why a last-minute legal letter from Keller's outside counsel, attorney Ashley Cook of the Cook Law Firm, focuses on process and buffer compliance rather than trying to stop the project outright. Cook's letter argues the submitted site plan does not show the required buffer yard along the residential boundary and asks the council to hold off on approving the agreement at today's meeting. Whether that argument changes anything this afternoon is genuinely unresolved. What it confirms is that even Westlake's harshest critics are fighting over conditions, not existence.
A Town That Has Never Run On Homeowners' Money
The deeper story here goes back further than this summer. In 1997, the Solana office complex, now the heart of Westlake's town hall itself, accounted for roughly 95 percent of the town's annual tax revenue, according to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram account archived on the town's own website. That was about $700,000 in sales tax and $200,000 in franchise fees each year, generated almost entirely by corporate tenants rather than homeowners. Solana had originally been anchored by IBM, and when IBM scaled back, the space refilled with Levi Strauss, Citicorp, Nokia, Wells Fargo, McKesson, and AMR Corp. The tenant names have changed four times over. The structure has not.
Today the anchors are Charles Schwab, whose completed headquarters campus is expected to employ more than 6,000 workers, and Deloitte University, a 750,000-square-foot training campus with 800 guest rooms and 500 on-site staff, according to Westlake's own economic development page. Front 44, the 44-acre mixed-use project just north of the Schwab campus on the same Circle T Ranch land, is the retail and dining layer built to serve that corporate population. The Circle T Data Center is the next tenant in a lineage that goes back to IBM, not a departure from it.
Westlake Mayor Kim Greaves made the connection explicit when the project was announced, saying the data center would expand the town's tax base and help "reduce the tax burden on our residents," according to Data Center Dynamics. Town officials project the project will generate roughly $5 million a year in tax revenue for its first decade, rising to about $7 million a year after that, an estimated 14 percent increase in the town's annual revenue, per reporting from the Dallas Express. For a town built almost entirely on commercial and office tax base rather than residential rolls, that is not a new bargain. It is the same one Westlake has been making since Ross Perot's Circle T Ranch first started giving way to corporate campuses.
| Project detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total site | 87.96 acres |
| Total development | 3.83 million sq ft |
| Data center building footprint | approx. 1.1 million sq ft |
| Power draw | 300 MW against a 350 MW Oncor switchyard |
| Projected on-site jobs | approx. 75 |
| Southern property buffer (Keller line) | 220 feet |
| Highway 377 buffer | 75 feet |
| Sound wall height | minimum 8 feet |
| Daytime / nighttime noise limit | 56 / 49 decibels |
| New trees planted | approx. 500 of 4,000+ total plantings |
| Projected annual tax revenue | $5M for first decade, then $7M |
The Border Nobody Gets To Vote Across
The reason this has become a two-town story rather than a routine zoning matter is the map itself. The site sits on the Westlake side of the boundary with Keller's Marshall Ridge neighborhood, close enough that some homes are roughly 506 feet from the nearest building line. Because the project falls entirely within Westlake's city limits, Keller's council has no formal authority to block or amend it, a point McMullin has made publicly more than once. Marshall Ridge residents live closer to the project than most Westlake homeowners do, and they have no vote in the town making the decision.
Westlake maintains this was not sprung on anyone. The town says representatives from Westlake, Keller, and Hillwood Properties met in December 2024 to review preliminary plans, with former Keller Mayor Armin Mizani and current City Manager Aaron Rector among those present. Whatever was discussed then clearly did not reach the residents who showed up at Marshall Ridge's own community meeting with McMullin on August 2, many of whom said they learned about the project from a town social media post. The gap between a courtesy briefing to city leadership nearly two years ago and a resident's first notice this summer is its own kind of lesson in how these approvals actually move.
What Actually Changes At Ground Level
For Westlake residents further from the boundary line, the practical footprint is narrower than the public hearing might suggest. The commission's approval attached specific conditions: a planted berm along U.S. 377, a minimum 8-foot sound wall or equivalent screening running the length of the southern boundary, a 220-foot buffer on the Keller side, and roughly 500 additional trees among more than 4,000 trees and shrubs going into the ground around the site. The town's noise ordinance caps sound at 56 decibels during the day and 49 at night, comparable to a quiet residential street, and officials project the completed campus will employ around 75 people, generating minimal daily traffic once construction wraps.
One number worth sitting with: PowerHouse's presentation put the data center's draw at 300 megawatts against a planned 350-megawatt Oncor switchyard, meaning roughly 50 megawatts of capacity would be available for use within the Westlake community itself, not just the project. That is the kind of detail easy to lose in a hearing dominated by noise and traffic concerns, but it is part of what the town is actually negotiating for in the development agreement up for a vote today.
The Uncertainty That Isn't Local
The one piece of this story that genuinely remains open runs through Austin, not Westlake or Keller. On August 3, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit large data center projects seeking to connect to the state power grid before construction proceeds, a response partly driven by concerns from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, according to reporting on the directive. McMullin has said publicly he hopes the Westlake project falls under that review. Whether it does, and what that means for a project already carrying a local development agreement, is not something today's council vote settles.
What today's vote will settle is narrower than most of the coverage has suggested. It is not a referendum on whether a data center belongs in Westlake. That question was answered by a zoning designation set before most current residents moved in. It is a negotiation over buffers, sound walls, and tree counts, layered onto a fiscal model this town has run on since before Charles Schwab or Deloitte ever broke ground here.
For residents trying to make sense of what changes and what doesn't, that context is the difference between reacting to a headline and understanding the town you actually live in.
If you're weighing a move to Westlake, Southlake, or another North Texas suburb where growth and neighborhood character are constantly being renegotiated, Andrea Miranda brings the kind of grounded, local read that goes beyond the listing sheet. Reach out for exclusive access to how these decisions are actually shaping the market street by street.
