Project dossier · Red Oak (Ellis County), Texas

Compass Datacenters Red Oak campus Approved

Red Oak City Council voted 4-1 to rezone ~830 acres of agricultural land ~20 miles south of Dallas to a planned development for a Compass data center campus of nearly a dozen buildings plus substations, after a marathon May 11 meeting that ran past midnight with 150+ residents present and ~1,600 petition signatures against; the planning and zoning board had recommended denial in late April. Conditions include lighting shields, decibel limits, a cryptocurrency-mining ban, closed-loop cooling with no city water draw, and $72 million in electric grid reinforcements; a 10-year, $2.82 million tax abatement passed on a separate 4-1 vote.

Key facts

Operator
Compass Datacenters
Size
830 ac
Location
Red Oak (Ellis County), Texas
Hearing
2026-05-11
Decided
2026-05-12
Stage today
Approved

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.

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What has happened so far (17 events)

  • 2020-01-29announcement
    Compass Datacenters announced it purchased 225 acres in Red Oak, Texas for a second Dallas-area campus capable of delivering 350+ MW of IT load, with a 6 MW facility scheduled for Q2 2020 delivery. · source
  • 2023-05-01announcement
    Compass Datacenters acquired 375 additional acres of vacant agricultural land in Red Oak, with plans to construct up to sixteen buildings on the new property, which a broker called potentially one of the largest campuses in the country. · source
  • 2023-11-05incentive
    Ellis County and the City of Red Oak partnered with Compass Datacenters on a tax abatement for Phase 2 construction of the Red Oak campus, which would double production capacity. · source
  • 2023-11-14announcement
    Schneider Electric and Compass Datacenters announced a $3 billion five-year partnership to manufacture prefabricated modular data centers, including a 110,000 sq ft integration facility to be built adjacent to the Red Oak campus. · source
  • 2024-06-20operational
    Schneider Electric held a ribbon cutting for its 105,000 sq ft data center integration facility adjacent to the Compass Red Oak campus, expected to create over 200 jobs and produce 240 power centers in 2025. · source
  • 2025-10-29financing
    Compass Datacenters secured a $326 million refinancing (maturing 2050) on five fully leased hyperscale data centers at its Red Oak campus totaling 180 MW, with three additional facilities planned at a combined $300 million construction budget. · source
  • 2026-04-27vote
    Red Oak's Planning and Zoning Commission voted 3-2 to recommend denial of the rezoning request for the proposed 830-acre Compass data center campus after a lengthy hearing with large community turnout. · source
  • 2026-05-11hearing
    Over 150 residents packed Red Oak City Hall (capacity 136, with 70+ waiting outside) for a marathon council meeting on the 830-acre Compass rezoning; public comment ran past 10 p.m. and the meeting lasted nearly five hours. · source
  • 2026-05-12vote
    City council approved the rezoning 4-1 around midnight following the May 11 meeting, with a separate 4-1 vote approving a tax abatement; over 150 residents attended and the council held an hour-long executive session before voting. · source
  • 2026-05-12coverage
    KERA reported that on the same day Red Oak approved the Compass rezoning, Somervell County commissioners voted unanimously on a non-binding resolution to restrict future data centers, highlighting a regional divide over data center growth. · source
  • 2026-05-26coverage
    At least eight Red Oak residents received code violation notices for posting 'No Data Center' yard signs; after CBS Texas coverage, the city acknowledged citing the wrong code and closed all related cases. · source
  • 2026-06-02announcement
    Compass Datacenters announced a $15 million commitment to build a new Ellis County animal shelter, calling itself a '100-year neighbor'; the grant requires approval by the Ellis County Commissioners Court. · source
  • 2026-06-23withdrawal
    Compass Datacenters withdrew its county tax abatement request for the proposed 890-acre Red Oak property before the June 23 Ellis County Commissioners Court meeting, with CEO Chris Crosby citing growing community 'noise' around the project. · source
  • 2026-06-30announcement
    Compass Datacenters and Texas State Technical College held a ribbon cutting for a $12.6 million, 40,000 sq ft training facility on the Red Oak campus for the MEI Data Center Pathway Program, a 12-week curriculum for career changers. · source
  • 2026-06-30coverage
    The Waxahachie Sun reported that the nonprofit Say NO MORE Data Centers (rebranding as Save Our Red Oak) is financing a legal challenge to Red Oak data centers through car show fundraisers and has retained legal counsel. · source
  • 2026-07-27coverage
    CRE Daily reported Red Oak has seven data center sites at various stages with a projected $13 billion total investment expected to quadruple the city's taxable land value; Google, Compass, and DataBank each received 10-year tax breaks. · source
  • 2026-07-27coverage
    NBC DFW reported Red Oak residents are petitioning the state for a data center moratorium and that the Texas Senate Finance Committee examined tax incentives and oversight of the state's 138 data centers. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 32.520, -96.800 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Recent news

8 stories tracked since 2026-05-11 across 7 outlets. 4× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. 2× The dispute has escalated into litigation. Most recent: “Gubernatorial independent Jenn Mack speaks against data centers in Red Oak” (Waxahachie Sun, 2026-10-01).

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 8 headlines archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Texas

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Compass Datacenters Red Oak campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/red-oak-compass-campus, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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