City to hold 2nd reading of rezoning ordinance for potential data center

Editor’s Note: The video in the player above concerns a headlining news event that occurred on Dec. 29, 2025.

SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) — The San Angelo City Council is set to hear a second reading and public hearing of ordinances to rezone land and amend its Comprehensive Plan in preparation for a potential data center in the town, a prospect that has fueled a growing debate among citizens.

The agenda packet for the City Council’s upcoming Jan. 13 regular meeting lists a consent agenda item that calls for the second reading and hearing of ordinances for a request to rezone 345.27 acres of land located “generally south and west” of the intersection of North U.S Highway 67 and Harriett Road from Ranch & Estate to Light Manufacturing and to amend the Comprehensive Plan to Industrial. The City Council had its first reading and public hearing of the ordinances during its Dec. 2, 2025, regular meeting, in which the councilmembers voted 7-0 to pass both requests, prep

A memo from Aaron Vannoy, the City’s director of planning and development services, included in the agenda packet states that Vannoy believes Light Manufacturing is the correct zoning “for a data center land use as well as Section 319 — Industrial Use Categories C. Manufacturing and Production.”

“The day-to-day operations of the facility match closely with our Manufacturing and production use category,” the memo reads. “Specifically, instruments, equipment, precise items and other electrical items as examples of processing.”

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The land — which “was annexed into the city in the summer of 2025 in preparation for potential development adjacent to the AEP substation,” as per the agenda packet — is the proposed site for a potential data center. The City has been in talks with Skybox Data Centers LLC., a company that is stated on its website to specialize in the development of “high-density hyperscale data centers,” with District 4 Councilmember Patrick Keely stating in a previous interview that the City Manager was authorized on May 6, 2025, to negotiate and execute a purchase and sales agreement with the company.

City officials and representatives of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce have previously stated that the proposed data center is a hyperscaler facility designed to house servers and other equipment capable of storing large quantities of data, with its capabilities growing as each of the six buildings proposed for the campus is constructed.

“It’s not AI, it’s not crypto-mining, it’s not Bitcoin, it’s just a straight data center, so you’ve just got servers storing many, many terabytes of digitized information,” Michael Looney, vice president of economic development for the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, said following a community meeting about the data center proposition held on Dec. 29, 2025.

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Looney also stated that, once fully constructed, the data center would have a tax valuation of approximately $21 billion to $22 billion.

The potential data center has led to a mounting discussion within San Angelo as residents weigh the possible resource costs, environmental ramifications and economic impacts of the facility. The debates led the City to create a Data Center Information webpage on its website in an effort “to educate the public, centralize verified information, and directly address common questions and misconceptions” about the project.

The City appears to be preparing for the discussion to make its way into the Jan. 13 City Council meeting, with a notification about the meeting published to its Facebook page on Jan. 8 stating that “comments concerning data centers and not related to the zoning case (consent item N) need to be made in the general public comment section for non-agenda items” and that “comments concerning the zoning case need to be made on consent agenda item N.”

For more information about making public comments at City Council meetings and to sign up to make a public comment, visit sanangelo.gov/publiccomment.

Previous data center stories

City launches data center info webpage as local discussion continues

San Angelo residents, leaders convene for data center community meeting

San Angelo public meeting set to discuss potential data center

San Angelo officials discuss potential data center project

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