The Perfect Site Can Still Be the Wrong Site

On paper, Project Tomahawk had one of the characteristics data center developers prize most: power. White Rose Partners proposed a roughly 225,000-square-foot data center on 37.3 acres in Prosper, Texas. Immediately southeast of the property sat an existing Brazos Electric Power Cooperative substation, an infrastructure advantage that project representatives specifically cited when explaining why the site made sense. The project never reached the Prosper Town Council.

On September 1, the Planning and Zoning Commission voted 7 to 0 to recommend denial after residents spoke for more than an hour against the project. Town staff also received more than 400 comments opposing the proposal, and an opposition petition eventually gathered more than 2,000 signatures. 

One week later, White Rose Partners withdrew the application. Managing partner Jeff Eigenbrood summed up the decision in one sentence: “We don’t want to go into communities where we’re not wanted.” That statement carries broader implications for development.

Physical Feasibility Is Only Part of Site Selection

The traditional site selection checklist is familiar. Land. Power. Water. Fiber. Access. Zoning. Economics. Those factors still matter. But projects with unusually large infrastructure footprints increasingly require another category of diligence: political and community feasibility. Project Tomahawk demonstrates why.

The adjacent substation helped answer an important infrastructure question. It did not address the questions residents and commissioners were asking about electricity demand, noise, water use, compatibility with nearby development, or the potential effect on local utility costs.

White Rose Partners responded to some of those concerns. The project website stated that water use would be limited, noise would be mitigated, and the developer would comply with applicable requirements. The company also proposed a 65-decibel maximum at the property boundary. However, some key operational details remained unresolved.

Commissioners specifically asked about exact noise levels, the project's electrical requirements, and its potential impact on residents' electricity rates. Developer representatives explained that some of those details could not be finalized until later in the development process. That created a problem that is increasingly common in data center development.

Developers Need Flexibility. Communities Want Certainty.

A speculative data center developer may not know the ultimate tenant when a site enters entitlement.

That is not unusual. Different tenants can bring different equipment, cooling systems, power requirements, operating characteristics, and building specifications. Some decisions legitimately cannot be made until an end user is identified.

But communities increasingly view those unanswered questions differently. From the developer's perspective, flexibility preserves the ability to attract a tenant. From the community's perspective, flexibility can look like uncertainty. When residents are asked to approve a land use with potentially significant energy, noise, and infrastructure implications, uncertainty itself can become a reason for opposition. That appears to be one of Prosper's central tensions.

The developer needed enough entitlement flexibility to make the site marketable. Commissioners wanted enough operational specificity to understand what they were approving. Neither position is particularly surprising. The problem is what happens when that gap is first addressed at a public hearing.

The Real Due Diligence Starts Earlier

The lesson from Project Tomahawk is not that data centers cannot be built near growing communities. It is that site selection cannot end with physical feasibility.

A site may have available acreage, nearby transmission infrastructure, favorable economics, and a workable development plan, yet still be politically unbuildable. That risk should be evaluated before substantial capital, entitlement work, engineering, and public positioning are committed to a location. For major infrastructure projects, developers should be asking another set of questions alongside the engineering analysis: 

What does the community believe this land should become?

What concerns already exist about growth?

Who is likely to organize?

What information will residents expect before an entitlement hearing?

What questions cannot yet be answered?

And perhaps most important, how much uncertainty will the community tolerate?

Project Tomahawk looked attractive because of what surrounded the property physically. It ultimately became unviable because of what surrounded the property politically.

That distinction matters.

The perfect site can still be the wrong site.