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A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/farmer-donates-land-for-a-park-city-sells-it-for-data-center-development-usd10-gift-became-usd10m-for-city-government-with-usd30m-tax-expected-over-next-decade https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/farmer-donates-la...
- AbrahamParangi 4mo agoLand that was conquered in war. It is reasonable to find this distasteful, but it is not unethical in any coherent way.
- f33d5173 4mo ago3000 years of philosophy, but fortunately you're here to tell us "war exists, so nothing can ever be bad or good".
- AbrahamParangi 4mo agoand how much of that philosophy do you even know?
- wilg 4mo agoGood luck finding pure and true land that never changed hands from war or conquest.
- AbrahamParangi 4mo agoyeah, that’s the point
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo agoGood thing he's not donating his body to science... they'd carve him up and sell him to plastic surgeons for parts.
- burnt-resistor 4mo agoThe IDF is practicing on the bodies of Americans donated to "science". https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2026/5/13/the-takehow-us-donor-bodies-were-sold-for-israeli-military-training https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2026/5/13/the-takehow-us-... https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/10/01/usc-sold-dead-bodies-to-us-military-to-train-idf-medical-personnel/ https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/10/01/usc-sold-dead-b...
- nativeit 4mo agoTangentially related: https://youtu.be/F4SmgrAmdUQ https://youtu.be/F4SmgrAmdUQ “When nothing belongs to everyone, the rich will own everything, including the rebellions against them,”
- bigp3t3 4mo agoTragedy of the commons, re-framed
- burnt-resistor 4mo agohttps://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-myth-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-myth-of-the-tragedy-of...
- impossiblefork 4mo agoBeautiful work, that video.
- burnt-resistor 4mo agoUnincorporated areas of London that were previously shared informally were commodified and transferred to the rich roughly around the 19th century, depriving commoners of them and gradually pushed them out.
- ninalanyon 4mo agoHappened all over England and started much earlier than that.
- helterskelter 4mo agoWow they had the condition that the land be used as a park baked into the deed when they sold it to the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed. Now their home is worthless because nobody wants to live next to a data center. When are we going to hold local government officials accountable for bullshit like this? Send them to prison.
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago[dead]
- Glyptodon 4mo agoWhy did the suit get dismissed? Local good ol boys doing the K-Drama USA dance?
- dwohnitmok 4mo agoMy guess is standing. The family bringing the suit is not the family that donated the land.
- AdrianB1 4mo agoIf it is a park, does it mean anyone living in the city has standing because their entire city lost the park?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4mo agoHopefully just being a resident of a city doesn’t give you standing to sue over any decision that has a tenuous adverse effect on you. I mean if that holds why shouldn’t visitors who might one day hope to visit the given park have standing to sue?
- AdrianB1 4mo ago> just being a resident of a city doesn’t give you standing to sue over any decision that has a tenuous adverse effect on you Why not? If you are impacted, why not? When do you have a standing then? Visitors out of town have less standing than the people paying taxes to the town, that is fair, but the city IS the people, each and every person, not an abstract third party that herds them like cattle.
- tartoran 4mo agoCan they sue and get the land back? The city can deal with the relocation of the datacenter since it's their doing.
- dingdingdang 4mo ago"... the city for $10, the city sold it, and when the family went to court their suit was dismissed."
- mminer237 4mo agoI think your quote is incorrect. I haven't seen that the family has done anything since the donation. It was unrelated neighbors who sued.
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoWhenever possible, conservation land should go into a conservation trust, not to the city, with a conservation easement. Defense in depth. Local government will do whatever is best at the time with whomever is in charge, conservation trusts will optimize to conserve and protect the land. No shame against this family, they and their gift were taken advantage of by their city and its representatives. You don't know what you don't know, "unknown unknowns." https://theconservationfoundation.org/protect-conservation-land-trusts/ https://theconservationfoundation.org/protect-conservation-l... > Conservation land trusts work for private and public land. There are many options available to help landowners preserve, protect, and restore land. Two of the most popular options are fee simple and conservation easements. The fee simple option has the conservation land trust owning and managing the land that is donated or sold. A conservation easement is where landowners and a land trust enter a legal agreement to permanently limit the use of an area to protect conservation values. Landowners can either sell or donate the easement to land trusts. Landowners retain ownership of the land, can sell their land in the future, or pass it on. But the conservation restrictions remain forever. (i work with a land conservation trust in the midwest)
- nemomarx 4mo ago> In their lawsuit, Griffin and the others aim to stop all commercial development and construction on the site, including Blueprint's data center project. They reference a land deed from 1999 that shows previous owners, the Cromwell family, granted the property to a nonprofit, the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, "to be held in trust for future use as parkland." Looks like they chose the trust poorly - the trust is the one who sold it to the city I think?
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoEntirely possible, I will have to read the deed and legal filings to speak authoritatively vs a hot take. Sometimes we trust the wrong people, which is a potential lesson in stronger controls and guardrails legally in this context.
- slwvx 4mo agoTo be explicit, if one separates ownership rights and development rights, and gives the development easement to a conservation trust/foundation that has a mandate to never sell them, I guess things will go better. There are land conservation trusts all over the US and if there isn't one you can create one. To be clear, I guess that a city who had ownership rights but not development rights could be stupid and ignore a conservation easement, but I guess that is not likely.
- kunai 4mo ago[flagged]
- ianm218 4mo agoI've seen a lot of people indicate they think people's predictions for the future with AI are like a psy-op and that none of them really believe it. Isn't it simpler to believe that people like Terrance Tao who have been in good standing with the academic community for a long time are telling the truth? Like you may very well disagree with their predictions based on your lived experience or theories... But it doesn't take some crazy leap of faith to follow their logic of "AI could get better at fundamental/ applied STEM research than humans -> we can scale this up exponentially -> scaled up human level or super human level research will lead to major scientific breakthroughs". Like sure CEO's like Amodei/ Altman/ and Musk may have an incentive to hype things up but not every opinion by every smart person has to be part of some grand conspiracy.
- kunai 4mo agoAcademics aren't infallible at all. The studies showing tobacco as non-harmful had the collaboration of a great many cooperative scientists. Generally speaking, many academics are amoral and will do very unscrupulous things for grant funding and exposure. It is a business. > AI could get better at fundamental/ applied STEM research than humans -> we can scale this up exponentially -> scaled up human level or super human level research will lead to major scientific breakthroughs". Again, this is a misapprehension of the technology itself and its most ideal use cases. Any software producing stochastic or probabilistic output and cannot produce verifiable, repeatable, and predictable data cannot fundamentally replace something that requires a high level of proof and validation. If you do this, you will expend valuable resources verifying the output that would be better spent just verifying the inputs in the first place. I'm no Luddite and I do think AI is cool and incredible technology. If you reframed that sentence as "AI could get better at taking the busywork and tedium out of fundamental/ applied STEM research than humans -> we can scale this up exponentially -> leveraging human strengths with AI's super-human strengths at assorting and analyzing information will lead to major scientific breakthroughs" then I would have absolutely no issue with it. But the marketing copy never says that and instead frames it as "AI can do anything a human can do and better," which is a) patently untrue, and b) suggests a very troubling agenda that the big corporations will have to answer for at some point or another.
- bluGill 4mo agoI oppose deed restrictions. They last forever and who knows what is correct for future generations. This is a jerk move by the city, but that is a different issue.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dylan604 4mo agoDeed restrictions can be modified. There are processes for doing it.
- bluGill 4mo agoMaybe. Many are forever. If the restriction is a via HOA there is generally a process to modify the HOA agreement. However there are other restrictions and some don't make provisions.
- dylan604 4mo agoNothing is forever. You just have to get enough people to agree. Look at the current US situation. Things thought of as forever are now being shown to be much less permanent.
- _heimdall 4mo agoI could see some kind of legal max duration of a deed restriction, but it seems totally reasonable as long as both parties know the agreement. If I can't write in a deed restriction then I also don't want the government writing easements and land use restrictions.
- bluGill 4mo agoI consider easements only valid when in use, or 5 years. That is once you build the "thing" you get to keep the easement, but if you stop using that pipe/cable/... you get 5 years to clean it up. If you are planning on building, you get 5 years to complete it, otherwise you have to start over getting another easement.
- limagnolia 4mo agoThere seems to be some missing details from the few sentences in this article. Does anyone have the full story? Why did the court dismiss the families lawsuit?
- nemomarx 4mo agohttps://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2025-09-26/taylor-texas-blueprint-data-centers-lawsuit https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2025-09-26/taylor-tex... This is closer to the time of the lawsuit and has some more details - they sold it to a trust who then sold it to the city some years later, and the city rezoned it in 2005. It's possible they missed the timing maybe?
- limagnolia 4mo agoThanks, I actually just found that article- and it gives a completely different view of events than the posted article. For one, it says the suit was from a group of residents, not the family who donated the land.
- dwohnitmok 4mo agoTo be fair the article never says that the family who donated the land was the one who was suing.
- limagnolia 4mo agoOkay, I can only see a few sentences and was going off what other commenters have said.
- kbelder 4mo agoThis may be a stupid question... do cities need to pay state property tax on properties they own?
- cldellow 4mo agohttps://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705,judge-rules-in-favor-of-data-center https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705,judge-rules-in-fav... has a bit more info. I don't know how to pull the actual court documents without paying for them, but the article indicates the case was dismissed for lack of standing. The plaintiffs tried to argue that as neighbours, they had an interest in the land usage being enforced. The court disagreed. I presume the original family could bring a case? It doesn't seem like the 404 article or the Taylor Press article talked to them to see how _they_ feel about how their gift is being used.
- etaham 4mo agoBut think about how many parks that data center's AI can design...
- _heimdall 4mo agoFair enough, and post scarcity should mean we have as many parks as we want.
- BenFranklin100 4mo agoSomething similar happened in Boston decades ago when the city decide to build Storrow drive over what was supposed to be parkland donated by Charles Storrow’s widow. Instead, they turned Boston’s riverfront into a ghastly highway. https://www.wbur.org/news/2009/07/17/esplanade-future https://www.wbur.org/news/2009/07/17/esplanade-future I don’t know the particulars of this Texas case, but the lack of green space in American cities is often the result of a car centric and building height limited urban planning. Paris is an excellent example of how urban density and green space can go hand-in-hand.
- dingdingdang 4mo agoThis is a a worthy legal gofundme if I ever saw one!
- kylehotchkiss 4mo agoMuch better to donate that land to nonprofits like https://naturecollective.org https://naturecollective.org who actually can turn things into parks. They're private too, which gives the legal right to trespass people who are trying to live on the park.
- kylehotchkiss 4mo agohttps://wildlandsconservancy.org https://wildlandsconservancy.org this was the actual nonprofit I was thinking of
- dwohnitmok 4mo agoSince this seems to be a misapprehension by a couple of commentators I'll put this as a top-level comment. The family bringing the lawsuit is not the family that donated the land.
- _heimdall 4mo ago(Sorry, I don't have access to read the full article) Is the family suing a member of the city? If so they still seem like valid complainants in the case since its publicly owned land.
- sapphicsnail 4mo agoThe land has changed hands a few times since it was deeded to the county. They're sueing the entity that sold it to the people developing the data center.
- culi 4mo ago1. Cromwell family donated 87 acres to nonprofit Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation in 1999 2. City sold 53 of those acres to Blueprint for $10 million in 2024. In addition, the city gave Blueprint 50% rebate on property taxes for 10 years and a 50% rebate on local sales-and-use tax collected on construction material purchases 3. Local neighbors sue to stop the violation of the deed. Judge dismisses the case on "no standing" in 2025. https://old.reddit.com/r/InterstellarKinetics/comments/1u0cf9l https://old.reddit.com/r/InterstellarKinetics/comments/1u0cf...
- beanjuiceII 4mo agoits a digital park
- b3ing 4mo agoReminds me a teacher lived thriftily in life and donated 2 or 3 million to a school in his will when he died. The school used it to buy a state of the art high school football scoreboard.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- wagwang 4mo agoDonating money is just not it. It's so easy to spend money you didn't work hard to make yourself. If you wanna do good, figure out how to deploy the resources to your cause.
- DANmode 4mo agoStep 1: Have a stated cause or known interest (Most people struggle to reach this step)
- rcxdude 4mo agoThe main thing is to trust who you're donating it to. Charities often struggle to do important but boring stuff because donors want to add all kinds of strings to the donation.
- tyrust 4mo agoThere are plenty of highly effective charities.
- wagwang 4mo agoMaybe but the ones in my city(who take city money) have literally nothing to show for.
- elzbardico 4mo agoNever donate things for the government. No matter if it is local, state, NEVER trust politicians. You want to give something for the community? for nature? create a foundation or deed it to a natural conservancy organization, another foundation, a church, but never the government.
- JuniperMesos 4mo agoYou can't necessarily assume that the people in charge of managing a foundation or natural conservancy organization or church will act as wise stewards of that resource in the future either.
- cameldrv 4mo agoNotwithstanding the merits of this case, I'm against the concept of unlimited time deed restrictions on property. Dead people should not be able to decide what living people can do with land or any other property indefinitely. That's why we have things like the rule against perpetuities, and requirements that charitable foundations spend a certain percentage of their assets every year. Some of these ideas strongly carry over to the idea of AIs acting as autonomous agents as well.
- crossroadsguy 4mo agoYes, they should if they are selling the land for $10. You don't want limits? Pay without limits.
- bitmasher9 4mo agoShould the limitations really exist in perpetuity? It seems unreasonable that land is forced to be a park in 1000 years because it was donated. The people in one hundred generations should be able to use the land how they see fit.
- francisofascii 4mo agoAgreed, but I am also against government selling public land, since we have so few parks and public spaces. It is much harder to buy it back later.
- phkahler 4mo ago>> Notwithstanding the merits of this case, I'm against the concept of unlimited time deed restrictions on property. Dead people should not be able to decide what living people can do with land or any other property indefinitely. I used to disagree with you, but your stance is the only one that makes sense. The way you control property use is through ownership. In this case the original family wanted it to be used as a park, but they didn't want to set up an entity to own and maintain the park so they tried to conditionally donate it to the city. And that worked for a long time. The weird thing is that the city agreed to this, and the state apparently honored the deed restriction and considered it valid, but now it can just be thrown out?
- alex0015 4mo agoWhat I'm seeing from the article is that the land is 87 acres and the data center is going to take up ~4 of them. Perhaps with the extra $3 million a year in tax revenue the city could build a park too. The article didn't really convince me that the homes are going to be significantly devalued or that people are going to be thrust into poverty. It says so, and dismisses out of hand claims to the opposite, but doesn't give much in the way of evidence for its points. I'm sympathetic to the agreement for the original donation. If the original deed said that the stipulation of donation was not only "only use this for a park" but also "never sell to anyone who might do something else," then I do think the city owes some very large compensation amount to somebody. If not, though... the city sold the land in 2008 to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation, at which point it doesn't really sound like the original deed has much value. If you buy land from someone privately and 18 years later it turns out it was gifted to them with the stipulation that they never sell, how much recourse should another party really have to stop you doing what you want with that land?
- culi 4mo agoThe full 87 acres were donated to the nonprofit Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. The city sold 53 acres for $10 million to the developer. In addition: > The Taylor City Council and the EDC are giving Blueprint a 50% rebate on property taxes for 10 years on each of the three phases of construction for the $1 billion project. In addition, the company would get a 50% rebate on local sales-and-use tax collected on construction material purchases. https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705 https://www.taylorpress.net/article/10705
- limagnolia 4mo agoIn another article, it mentions that there is a buffer zone still owned by the city between the houses and the datacenter. They also mention that there is another park nearby (doesn't say how near).
- 6d6b73 4mo agoIn 20 years all these datacenters will be Superfund sites where taxpayers will have to cover the cost of environmental damage.
- claudeomusic 4mo agoThis is the most American news story ever
- alasdair_ 4mo agoDoes this mean Mamdani can build a datacenter in the middle of central park if he wanted to?
- JuniperMesos 4mo agoNo, the specific land use regulations around central park in new york city have basically nothing to do with the specific land use regulations around this particular piece of land in Texas.
- metalman 4mo agowe have a causway built by a private family, that then turned into a beach through natural forces, a HUGE sand beach with waves on one side, and a sheltered shallow bay on the other, which was used as private access to a string of small islands, which was donated to the province, with certain conditions, which include that if the conditions are broken, it returns to the family, one condition is that the beach remains open for anyone to drive and park on. And time and time again groups form to try and gain controll of this several mile long hard sand beach, only to discover what a good contract that thousands of people know about is worth.
- clickety_clack 4mo agoI don’t get why you would sell the land instead of putting it in a trust inherited by your descendants and leased to the city for some long period of time. Then everybody wins and the city can’t just decide to sell it to someone else.
- ProllyInfamous 4mo agoThe US Federal Government donated surplus ammunition depots to the city of Chattanooga, decades ago. Deed restrictions limited its usage as "parkland." Recently, our mayor attempted to sell this parkland (technically zoned "industrial") to gain a quick half-million for the county. It is adjacent to VW's Tennessee assemblyline. Fortunately this was rejected, and now it's being greenwashed as "conservation" by that same mayor.
- JuniperMesos 4mo agoWhy is it better for the city of Chattanooga to use land formerly occupied by ammunition depots as parkland, than for it to sell it to VW so they can use it to expand their assembly line?
- ProllyInfamous 4mo agoCurrently VW is contracting (as is most of non-tech global manufacturing). Third-shift has entirely stopped. Severance-buyouts offered. ...so currently unnecessary. Also, the parkland has heavily-used trails, and this would block off almost the entire south of the park from pre-existing public access/neighborhoods. Our county recently (a few years ago) purchased the largest remaining farm, with intentions of developing an industrial business park – IMHO: also foolishly: it's so far away that it has no infrastructure and is difficult to access – but perfect for bluecollar (county-living) workers, nearby. ---- Thankfully this issue has been tabled, for now. NPS just gave the county this land this century, with deed restrictions for "greenway" – I agree that 200-years-past restrictions shouldn't debilitate living populations... but most of those living (when NPS gave to county) are still living.
- foxyv 4mo agoMeanwhile I can't build a carport for my driveway because of the "Character of the Neighborhood"
- silexia 4mo agoMaybe this will fund a bigger better park with playgrounds and water features?
- readthenotes1 4mo agoPossibly, but only if the mayor and a couple of city council members own the new land
- radley 4mo agoIt will, just not in the U.S. Probably in private resorts in Albania, Saudi Arabia, etc.
- breezybottom 4mo agoDon't forget Israel and Qatar
- postflopclarity 4mo agothat costs a $200 monthly subscription to access, the profits going directly to grifter's pockets.
- Innittech 4mo agoAre deeds with conditions like that legal in that jurisdiction?
- SwellJoe 4mo agoExcept when they violate civil rights (i.e. "whites only" deed restrictions are not enforceable, though they do exist), I think the answer would generally be yes. In some places in Texas, there is no zoning, only deed restrictions, Houston being the largest city where that's so, though that has evolved a bit and the city does have more say about land use than in the past. Anyway, deed restrictions run with the land and are legally binding on subsequent owners in Texas. Buying land is agreeing to the contract implied by the deed restrictions. It's part of the due diligence of acquiring land in Texas. Of course, governments can change the terms of that kind of thing in some cases. But, I suspect any honest reading of this situation would have required the city to go through a public hearing process so that the neighbors of the property were aware and had a voice in the decision, at the very least (but maybe even with that, their was a clear agreement to reserve the land for parkland, they shouldn't have taken the land if that wasn't an acceptable obligation). Property rights and contract law are pretty sacred in Texas. I lean YIMBY about a lot of things, but this gets my hackles up. It looks illegal on its face and shouldn't have made it through the cities lawyers going over this deal. Edit: I should also mention that it is literally the neighbors right/obligation to sue in these cases. I've seen the argument that the neighbors of the land don't have standing. But, for deed restrictions, the neighbors are exactly the people with standing to sue over violations of deed restrictions. Cities in Texas are not obligated to enforce deed restrictions in most cases and most do not, Houston is one major exception to that rule.
- FireBeyond 4mo ago> Except when they violate civil rights (i.e. "whites only" deed restrictions are not enforceable, though they do exist) In my deeply blue city in my deeply blue city there were several HOAs with covenants around "non-whites" could only live in servants quarters on property, etc. These clauses and covenants were non-enforceable, but when my city went after the HOAs to physically remove the clauses, they still encountered pockets of resistance, from "historical significance" to "what's the point, they're unenforceable" to "ugh, we'd have to hire attorneys to do that" to the point where the city had to announce sanctions ranging from fines up to investigating the possibility of forcible dissolution of the HOA. Unenforceable or not, picture how welcome you'd feel as a POC reading that in the HOA covenants for a prospective home purchase.
- rvz 4mo agoNew homes for AI agents.
- trashface 4mo agoYep its Texas.
- type0 4mo agoGood deed for our robot overlords!
- asdfman123 4mo agoNo good deed goes unpunished
- mohamedkoubaa 4mo agoNor unviolated, in this case
- enaaem 4mo agoAmerican zoning is weird. You can't walk to a grocery store, but you can walk to a data center.
- logancbrown 4mo agoYou cant walk to a data center either
- thepryz 4mo agoYou obviously have never been to Ashburn, Virginia. Look up Lord Fairfax Pl. in Ashburn, VA on Google Maps and note the data center just outside that neighborhood.
- kube-system 4mo agoAnd just up the road in Arlington you can walk to a grocery store
- ojame 4mo agoLiterally in the article is a proposed development that is (easily) walkable from residential houses.
- casey2 4mo ago[flagged]
- LocalH 4mo agoTransfer the land to the city either for free or for a nominal fee, but with a covenant. City resells the land and ignores the covenant. Yes, we know that title or deed is only as good as the enforcement behind it. But if governments discard that to enrich themselves, then that's what a certain amendment is for, as that is pure tyranny.
- Theodores 4mo agoTotally unrelated fun story. Recently I learned that the park nearest where my parents lived was named after a Mr Park, hence the name of the park, 'Park Gardens'. It contains a war memorial, albeit with Mr Park's name on it, albeit his son. WW1 for you. Up until 1920 the park was pasture, then Mr Park bought it and it was landscaped very nicely. Since then it has been a well maintained park and actively used. For housing it would make a very good earner for the council, due to its location. As a data centre though? Only lots of bribery and tear gas would get that approved. Once upon a time the park was just a farmer's field, for pasture. Nowadays it is proudly owned by the town and more than just land. As for the story that 'land' might just be land, but, in time, it could have been another wonderful 'Park Gardens'.
- zug_zug 4mo agoIt's exhausting that the "solution" to problems like this is getting tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens stressed until enough public attention gives some small chance of redress. I'm not calling for violence, but if we can't get these things fixed in court there has to be a more effect and more forceful avenue for protest than venting on internet forums.
- drekipus 4mo ago[flagged]
- josephg 4mo agoI saw a clip the other day of an American comedian doing crowd work in Paris. He asked the audience what America should do, and the French said - something like - they should punch the police more and light things on fire. To me that sounds crazy! But, I can see how it works for the French. They protest all the time, and the government is very responsive to the needs of the people. Much more so than the American government sees to be.
- nicbou 4mo agoIs the French government more responsive than those of neighbouring countries?
- boricj 4mo agoProbably because we have a well established history of regularly changing regimes. Since we overthrew royalty in 1789 we've had five republics, two empires, three monarchies and a bunch of short-lived totalitarian regimes, coups and other major political events. If anything, the longevity of the Fifth Republic is starting to become unusual (only the Third Republic and the Ancien Régime have lasted longer). Maybe we're overdue to flip the table again as per tradition.
- Lerc 4mo agoHow well did they turn out for people each time?
- unglaublich 4mo ago[flagged]
- preinheimer 4mo agoLots of endowments come with strings attached. We made a charitable donation to a local university for them to buy some specific science outreach equipment, they bought it. This all seems reasonable to me. If you want my money or things, you’ll have to use them like I suggest.
- LanceH 4mo agoAnd they end up in court cases where the people using it contrary go in with an argument like, "we really need it" or "we already spent it". Depending on how connected they are versus the person who has already passed, they frequently win.
- michaelt 4mo agoTo a reasonable extent, including this case, yes. But there are limits - with finite resources like land, the present-day owners should not be subject to the whims of men who've been dead for 150+ years. If in my great-great-great-grandfather's day he wanted part of his legacy to be land passed to his son who'd pass it on to his son and so on - that shouldn't stop me passing it on to my daughter.
- crummy 4mo agoWhy can’t gifts have contracts?
- mothballed 4mo agoThey can, but if the legal entity on the other end of the contract is a breathing person who has deceased, who has standing to enforce it?
- strangattractor 4mo agoIf you don't want to abide by the conditions of a gift - don't accept it.
- hmokiguess 4mo agoCan it be both? Trying to think of a data centre themed expedition now where you go visit the robots and interact with the machines
- ipdashc 4mo agoYou know, you joke (I think?) but data center companies could genuinely at least open up for tours to try to appeal to the public, if public approval is apparently such a concern. It's funny that they haven't done it at all yet. Think nuclear power plants in the 60s or 70s, many of them were open for tours or school field trips or such to try to make them more appealing to the populace around them. I haven't heard of a single DC doing the same thing, unless you're a potential customer. Isn't this stuff kind of basic?
- snickerbockers 4mo agoThat won't work when your tour guide can't even answer questions about what the computers do because theyre all running VMs that are rented out on an ad-hoc basis.
- taraindara 4mo agoThey could say anything and the visitors would have to believe it. A canyon tour guide tells me a story about why a rock formation is named the way it is. I have no clue if it’s true. But I enjoy it still.
- Leonard_of_Q 4mo agoThe tour guide could just give that answer to any such question. It'd be comparable to the answer given to someone who wants to know what that new railroad which was built where there used to be fields or forest is used for: people ride it to go somewhere, freight is passing over it going places. Having said this I do feel like these data centres should be built in such a way that waste heat is used in some way. Use it to heat structures, greenhouses, whatever. I used to live in a place where a large fraction of the block heating came from a nearby power plant with additional gas-fired heating for when the waste heat wasn't enough. The same can be done with waste heat from data centres by using heat pumps. This can work in colder climates and in the cooler seasons in moderate climates.
- ionwake 4mo agoRumour was an old lady donated posthumously alot of money she had saved up her whole life, to build a university at Estepona in Spain. After she died they never built it. The town remains pretty much the same as it always was. Last time I was there they had replaced the red marble promenade that was cracked on the beach with some sort of rubber playground cement, and for some reason that I can only put down to malice, built a large statue that resembles a rat about 8 feet tall and placed it at the intersection of the promenade with the town center, where there used to be old spanish men and youths playing on many free foosball tables Bear in mind this fishing town is next to Marbella perhaps the richest destination in the mediterranean. Its almost as if as a child I fell asleep and woke up in a nightmare, when I visited. Fortunately they left what remains of the old town alone and its still a beautiful (in parts) tourist destination.
- jubilanti 4mo agoFor the median worker in a small town in Spain, an entire life savings of scrimping and saving could still be only a fraction of what it would take to build one lecture hall. Might not even pay for a single year of salaries, operations, and expenses. Put a million Euros into an endowment, and at 5% annual returns, that's 50,000 Euros, enough to hire maybe one person to run and teach everything. Even if it was 10 million Euros, that's a lot less than you think if you want to start even a small school and not run out of money in a few years.
- ionwake 4mo agothe point of the story was that it was given to the council on condition they built a university with it ( she wasn't a fishermans wife ). as in she was rich bro edit> are you trolling me?
- dpark 4mo agoYou call this a rumor at the top of your comment. It’s all hearsay and you can’t really criticize people for assuming something different than you assume. There’s no factual information here to discuss.
- sebastiennight 4mo agoToday the Sagrada Familia, now the tallest church in the world, was inaugurated in Spain, 100 years after the death of its architect Gaudì. Can you imagine the number of H100s we could have put in there if this was Texas?
- DrewADesign 4mo agoWe can right these wrongs. Vertical cooling seems feasible. A Google Maps 3D tour of the interior would be much more accessible. You’re not anti-accessibility, right? This is a moral imperative. Thank you for pointing this out.
- vntok 4mo agoThe cooling towers are right there.
- DrewADesign 4mo agoIt’s true. All we have to do is figure out how much money it will take to steamroll the area backwards NIMBY dumb dumbs that don’t understand how much more societally beneficial this is, and how much more important our vision and shareholder stakes are.
- connicpu 4mo agoMake it GB300s and now you're cooking with gas (specifically the gas in the supplemental methane turbine generators that will be on site for when the grid is overwhelmed)
- redlewel 4mo ago[flagged]
- supertroop 4mo agoNo. Demand the government be made accountable. Government can actually work despite all the vapid puerile tropes.
- spicyusername 4mo ago$10 gift became $10M for city government, with $30M tax expected over next decade I mean... pretty easy to see why... I think if the city tried to communicate what that money is going to be used for, perhaps it'd be slightly more palatable. Or perhaps the pitchforks are already out, and it wouldn't.
- vasco 4mo agoIt's the US so it's probably going to fund lawsuits against the police department.
- mothballed 4mo ago4d chess move is to sell it for the price they'll pay out in salary to the city lawyer, city engineer, favored contractors, and whoever else will show up as paid "expert witnesses" to the trial defending the sale. Whoever challenges it thinks they're costing the state, when in fact the trial is the whole grift and it doesn't even matter who wins.
- iteria 4mo agoThe problem is that these things often don't manifest. There's a massive data centers near me. Supposedly we're supposed to get all this blah blah blah. Well, the data center "accidentally" didn't pay for several months of water to the point where the local cost of water went up what what they thought was a shortfall until they realized nope, we were just stolen from. And no way could we fine them for this total accident of not paying their massive water bill for several months. They're put business partners. Somehow. Also, I've had more black outs since the data center has been active than I've ever experienced. I'm sure these things are unrelated. Along with the increased cost of electricity. And I'm on the other side of town from the data center. The locals nearby complain about more. I still don't know what supposed benefit I got from it being here. We already had a well funded government before the data center was here. I think this situation is why many are so anti-data center. The city gets the cash from the land sell and they get some temporary industry from the construction and then it's just a drain on the area.
- TrackerFF 4mo agoMore than once I've read stories about small local counties selling huge plots of lands to companies promising to build data centers, only for those companies to flip the land instantly for double or triple the price. There seems to be no shortage of desperate rural areas that are more than willing to sign ridiculous no-strings-attached deals with companies, in the hopes that they'll geta a couple of years with economic stimuli. I can't blame them, I'm from a small place like that, and have seem some atrocious deals go through. I think that if you're unscrupulous enough, there's a killing to be made by those type of grifts.
- smallmancontrov 4mo ago"value creation"
- mothballed 4mo agoWell the city could just sell the land for 2-3x the price from the get go, but Karen and the people she elects wants to pretend like their zoning and red tape policies are saving the spotted owl or keeping their retirement nest egg valuable or whatever, so inevitably they red tape themselves into a corner at which point the grift just becomes too juicy and the greedy voters hand the opportunity to an even greedier and cunning bastard on a silver plate who will package it up and sell it to a fake "data center" and the developers get their way anyway.
- lII1lIlI11ll 4mo agoBut why don't those small local counties desperate for funds just sell their plots of land for double of triple the price themselves?
- TrackerFF 4mo agoLack of network/connections. The first company that flips the land, will go into the deal with potential buyers, and lowball the crap out of the seller. Sometime the sales (when they flip) are done via acquisition by the target company. In all practical sense, the first buyer functions as a scout, doing research and negotiations, and make at tops a couple of million. A nice payday, but not enormous amounts of money. But for sure money that would have come handy for the county that owned the land.
- analog31 4mo agoThe uniqueness of this episode suggests that there are people out there who are fully occupied searching every square foot of the earth for places where they can wheedle their way into a land deal. If it's not for a data center, then it's a CAFO, a mine, logistics center, etc. NIMBYism is not just a matter of wanting to preserve exorbitant land values, but a knowledge that every square foot of land and gallon of water is in demand by nefarious people who are not revealing their actual intentions.
- jinpan 4mo agonot too far from an onion video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkDKmSMvfmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkDKmSMvfmk
- nmstoker 4mo agoThis commercial abuse is reminiscent of what Wimbledon is doing with land left for public park land which various parties are ignoring so the land can be used for tennis facilities. I'm a fan of the tennis but that doesn't mean they can arbitrarily ignore what was agreed as a condition for letting the council have the land in the first place.
- Lerc 4mo agoThe picture at the top of the article seems at odds with the text of the article. The text says 135,000 square feet for the data center. Given the area marked city owned property says it is 560 feet. 135,000 square feet would be an area 240 feet wide alongside the road. The area marked in red. is substantially larger than that. 130680 square feet is three acres. I wonder if the number is a rounded conversion from acreage. It seems a bit short of the 87acres that is specified as the amount given to the city. Maybe the entire red outlined area is 87Acres, It's kinda hard to eyeball an irregular shape like that.
- ticulatedspline 4mo agopretty sure the red is the bulk of parcel R130425000A0001 52.42 acres. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1601-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Blvd-Taylor-TX-76574/250824082_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1601-Martin-Luther-King-J...
- Lerc 4mo agoI measured it out. I think it's the bulk of red, possibly ending at the dashed lines at the right-top. That area going all the way down including the housing development and cutting out both of the substations is 87 acres. Each of the three marked buildings (assuming the two grey and three white rectangles make up a single building) is 135,000 square feet.
- dmix 4mo agoIt’s so funny how data centers became a popular boogieman on social media. Modern information warfare
- Loughla 4mo agoI don't want a massive industrial looking building across the road from my house, nor do I want the noise or traffic or anything else that comes along with it. I'm not sure it's information warfare as much as garden variety NIMBY people doing what they do best. . . . Making noise constantly.
- yonran 4mo agoOn the one hand, the wishes of a donor should be respected to some degree. On the other hand, the government should be allowed to make the best use of land in its jurisdiction for the people who live there today, since “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living” and we should “preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain” as Thomas Jefferson might say. Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead. And I am concerned that the purpose of slanted anti-datacenter coverage by the likes of 404media.co and perfectunion.us is to inspire memetic NIMBYism that has and will cause tremendous damage to the US.
- yonran 4mo agoOn the one hand, the wishes of a donor should be respected to some degree. On the other hand, the government should be allowed to make the best use of land in its jurisdiction for the people who live there today, since “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living” and we should “preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain” as Thomas Jefferson might say. Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead. And I am concerned that the purpose of slanted anti-datacenter coverage by the likes of 404media.co and perfectunion.us is to inspire memetic NIMBYism that has and will cause tremendous damage to the US.
- handoflixue 4mo ago> Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead. This only came up because living people also care about it. If you want to make it illegal to dictate how land is used, do so directly. I'd be fine with the state passing a new law, voted on by the people, stripping such deeds of their status. But until then, it doesn't seem good at all to ignore an existing law at the whims of local government. And of course, at that point, don't be surprised when the people keep voting to toss data centers out - if individuals can't be expected to dictate what happens to their land, neither should corporations.
- dpark 4mo agoI disagree with you in principle. I think a town that accepts a donation of land for a specific purpose should be as bound as anyone else to the terms of the deed. In practical terms, it’s not clear that an entity with the power of imminent domain can meaningfully be constrained by deeds.
- yonran 4mo agoIn principle, I think there aught to be a rule against perpetuities. Including conservation easements. The community should be able to decide where their parks will be, not some former landowner. There is another 55-acre park (Fannie Robinson Park, 1009 E MLK Jr Blvd) about 1/2 mi down the street from the datacenter site (1601 E MLK). Legally, this case is about the terminology of a deed that was sloppily made “in trust… for parkland”, and standing to sue. It’s currently on appeal. (Trial court: https://judicialrecords.wilco.org/PublicAccess/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=2463582 https://judicialrecords.wilco.org/PublicAccess/CaseDetail.as.... Appeal, 15th Court of Appeals: https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=03-25-00831-CV&coa=coa03 https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=03-25-00831-CV&coa=.... Appeal, 15th Court of Appeals: https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=15-25-00202-CV&coa=coa15 https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=15-25-00202-CV&coa=...). It’s a shame that the deed was poorly granted. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if it had been held privately and taxed as such. And as far as newsworthiness is concerned, the actual deed lost its restriction in 2003, and the city transferred it to the Economic Development Corporation in 2008. It could have then been sold to any industrial purpose. This is not really a national story about datacenters. It is the story about a 2008 sale for industrial purposes. The fact that this is recirculated as a datacenter story is meant to poison the public on any mention of the word datacenter. I think this trend of biased news is intentional. According to opus 4.8, here’s the chain of title for the 87.797‑acre Taylor tract: 1. 7/7/1999 — Bonnibel Bland Cromwell & family → Texas Parks & Recreation Foundation (deed carries the "held in trust… for parkland" restriction). Recorded #199947198. Consideration: $10 (charitable donation). 2. 10/7/2003 — Texas Parks & Recreation Foundation → Williamson County Park Foundation, Inc. Recorded #2003100356. Consideration: $10 (nominal/recited). 3. 11/20/2003 — Williamson County Park Foundation → City of Taylor. Consideration: $10 (nominal/recited). 4. 11/12/2008 — City of Taylor → Taylor Economic Development Corporation. Recorded #2008084718. Consideration: $15,000 cash + a land swap — the EDC also conveyed two tracts back to the City “by exchange” (a ~22.708‑ac tract in the Samuel Pharass Survey + a 16.658‑ac tract in the Coursey Survey); no dollar value stated for the swapped tracts. 5. 11/19/2024 — (Plat Map Recording Sheet; not a transfer) 6. 4/11/2025 — Taylor Economic Development Corporation → NCP Travis TPP Project, LLC (Blueprint Data Centers). Consideration on the deed: "Cash and other good and valuable consideration" — no figure stated; reported at ~$10 million in the press.
- d_burfoot 4mo agoThe people of the town decided they'd rather have $10M and $3M/year instead of some random extra parkland. That money is significant for a small, non-wealthy Texas town. Also, there is already a park right to the west of the residential section shown in the map, called Fannie Robinson park. https://shorturl.at/jbWuw https://shorturl.at/jbWuw
- hinkley 4mo agoThis is why people donate land to orgs like The Nature Conservancy. Although even there, if you donate land in a location they feel they won't be able to manage, they may sell it to purchase other land/pad the endowment. In theory they will end up being land swaps if you wait long enough, but nana's favorite tree could still end up under a Walmart.
- irjustin 4mo agoMan o man, that's frustrating to no end. I REALLY hope there was a clause in there that if the city does ANYTHING other than turn it into a park the man can sue the city for 120% of the value of the sale or he gets 90% of the sales revenue.
- msisk6 4mo agoHuh. I lived in Taylor about 6 years ago. It's your typical small Texas town about 30-minutes east of Austin. Very Texas. It's not the sort of thing I'd think would happen here. Small town folks talk. But with the huge new Samsung fab going up on one side of town, this datacenter on the other, and the unfathomable growth in this part of Texas; I guess things are a changing. Hopefully all the attention this is getting will enforce the original deed restrictions. It's too bad it's a data center; there's already so much hysteria around those and this being a data center project really has nothing to do with the city purposely going around the deed restrictions. But the money, I guess.
- no-name-here 4mo ago> the deed restrictions Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand. > In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction. The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center
- msisk6 4mo agoPerhaps not. I'm certainly not an expert in Texas property law. Be interesting to see what happens. Quite a deal for the city if it sticks; get land for $10, hold it for awhile, sell for $10M, get taxes from a $1B data center build.
- ticulatedspline 4mo agoGonna play a little devil's advocate here. Setting aside whether I think data centers or good or bad and just focusing on the sale of the land (for whatever purpose). The land was donated back in 99 and looks like they never followed through on making it anything. Which is pretty shitty to Mr Bland's vision. Though that donation itself is a bit weird because literally on the just the other side of the neighborhood is. a park! https://maps.app.goo.gl/jwcANZ59bW17sTmm7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/jwcANZ59bW17sTmm7 according to the town site the park was dedicated in 1955 https://www.taylortx.gov/244/Fannie-Robinson-Park https://www.taylortx.gov/244/Fannie-Robinson-Park I suspect It just sat fallow for 25 years because there was already a park nearby and nobody bothered to press them on using the land for it's donated purpose. It switched hands a few times. Likely someone turned it up in some meeting and realized at this point they were never going to do anything with it and might as well sell it. Edit: In considering the protracted timeline, I revise the assumption to "nobody at the office knew why they had the land or any stipulations attached to it". it's even possible that the buyers in 08 didn't know the terms of the original deed from nearly a decade before. Not that it makes it right to sell it but the intent wasn't likely malicious, the land wasn't donated just last year or anything.
- CivBase 4mo ago> Though that donation itself is a bit weird because literally on the just the other side of the neighborhood is. a park! To be fair, parks don't just mean playground equipment. It could be a forested area with trails. It could be a drainage pond you can fish in. It could be a garden or prairie. It could even just be a big grass lot where people can play games and do whatever.
- chmod775 4mo agoCalling that a park is stretching it, even if someone named it "park". That's a playground, some grass, and a parking space. Not something where you can enjoy a stroll for a couple hours. A city of ~20k doesn't have to go crazy here, but surely you can maintain something nicer (especially once you have that data center money!)
- gustavus 4mo ago
- soganess 4mo agoWas anyone else bracing to read about a local ordnance that reclassified a data centers as a type of park (...for the AI to play in, duh)? My brain officially only understands "up" as "down"...
- hackernulls 4mo ago[dead]
- bawolff 4mo agoUmm so if the deed had a legally binding condition on it, why is that condition being ignored? The article doesn't say what the rationale was. Was the condition not legally binding in texas? Is there some time limit on it? Something else? What is the legal excuse being used?
- no-name-here 4mo agoI agree that the OP article isn’t great - deep in the article it seems to say it’s legal but doesn’t explain why, even though the article goes into detail on less important matters. Regardless, the government says there was never a “deed restriction” but they say there was something else which I don’t understand: > In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction. The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center
- gamblor956 4mo agoWhy are people so mad? This stuff is legal in Texas. It's exactly the desired outcome from the lack of regulation.
- charcircuit 4mo agoIt was given back to the city over 20 years ago. Trying to tie the current owner into what happened forever ago just does not make sense.
- gsky 4mo agoNo wonder we have less and less good people.
- focusgroup0 4mo ago[flagged]
- dataflow 4mo agoWhat do you see as wrong with that? What was supposed to happen to the land instead?
- lII1lIlI11ll 4mo agoAnd the outrage is about what exactly? The tribe not respecting NIMBY-sensibilities of non-indigenous Vancouver residents?
- ElijahLynn 4mo agoI've had a few fantasies that if I become wealthy enough ever that I want to buy a whole bunch of multiple city blocks in my city make them public parks. But I did have that same fear is how do I ensure they survive? Do I do a land trust or something like that? How would a donation survive so something like this doesn't happen?
- CGamesPlay 4mo agoEnshrine it in actual law. Theodore Roosevelt donated some of his land when the national parks became law, and that’s held up reasonably well. There’s no such thing as a guarantee, but it is pretty decent precedence.
- ElijahLynn 4mo agoThank you!
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoYou find an institution that is likely to continue to exist and let them manage it. You need someone to sue on your behalf 1000 years down the line. Long Now foundation hosted a talk [0] on this, “Continuity: Discovering the Lessons behind the World’s Longest-lived Organizations” [0] https://longnow.org/talks/02021-rose/ https://longnow.org/talks/02021-rose/
- ElijahLynn 4mo agoLove this, thank you!
- PearlRiver 4mo agoI am starting to notice a pattern here: all these datacenters are located in places with cheap land and lots of poor people. Odd for something that I am assured is the bright future for mankind.
- t1234s 4mo agoWhat happens to all of these data centers once "Data centers in space" is a thing?
- stinkbeetle 4mo agoFirst mistake was trusting the government. Never give anything to the government that they don't force you to with their threats of violence and other coercive action.