The Catholic liberal arts university has teamed up with Dallas commercial real estate developer KDC for a data center campus to capture big data and artificial intelligence demands across the region.
While the land located along State Highway 114 at Braniff Drive was originally earmarked for office or multifamily, the University of Dallas found that it wasn’t economically feasible under current market conditions to build out either product.
Data center development became the standout use.
The zoning application tentatively introduced the idea of about 770,000 square feet of data center space across 67.3 acres that sits across the highway from the university’s main campus.
The data center, which will be built low so as to not impede the feel of the adjacent Cistercian Abbey and Cistercian Preparatory School, would add millions in taxable value to the land that is currently tax exempt.
“The University of Dallas greatly appreciates the council’s fair consideration and ultimate support of our recent zoning application,” said University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Stanford in a statement. “The university is proud of our association with KDC with its extensive experience in the city of Irving, and the company’s national portfolio of data centers. It is heartening to witness the mutual trust amongst the university, KDC and the city.”
KDC, which is currently developing Wells Fargo’s new regional hub in Irving, has confirmed with electricity delivery utility company Oncor that transmission lines surrounding the site were recently upgraded to support hyper-scale level power capacity.
“KDC has developed over a dozen significant data center projects over our 35-year company history. We are thrilled to partner with the University of Dallas to transform their site into a world-class data center campus,” said KDC CEO Steve Van Amburgh.
Dallas-based architecture firm Corgan is leading the project’s design, with Telios serving as engineer and Kimley-Horn as civil engineer.
Completion for the development, which is currently in the design phase, is slated for early 2027.
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Editor's Note: A previous version of this story used a headline that incorrectly indicated the University of Dallas would host the new data center for the city of Irving.
