LUBBOCK, Texas — Lubbock Economic Development Alliance President and CEO John Osborne confirmed LEDA made a purchase and sale agreement with CORVA Infrastructure Services, and AI data center company, during its June board meeting.

The data center will be built on a 100-acre plot of land north of Loop 289 on Municipal Drive. Osborne said it’ll be about 50,000 square feet, use about 1,5000 gallons of water per day, and have a maximum capacity of 27 megawatts of electricity.

“It’s not meant to be a hyperscale,” he said. “They are going to be in the city limits of Lubbock, so that means they have to abide by all the regulations that the city of Lubbock has on that site.”

Osborne said CORVA hopes to be operational by 2028. He said he does not know of any plans to eventually expand the data center.


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Osborne said the center will start with a capacity of 6 megawatts (MW) and grow to 27 MW. The CORVA website says a full campus could get up to 72 MW, but Osborne said that won’t be this project.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is the only project in Lubbock that they’re considering,” Osborne said. “I think they’re looking throughout the entire region. I don’t know of another project that they’re trying to do in Lubbock County right now — let alone inside the city limits.”

Osborne said the data center will bring in $23 million dollars over ten years, and create 15 jobs with an average salary of $85,000.

“About $2.3 million a year of net positive benefits to the city of Lubbock and to Lubbock County,” Osborne said. “It’s about $1.4 million annually. And even so, like the hospital district is an extra $300,000 in tax funds that come directly to them as a result of this project.

Right now, the tract of land is still owned by LEDA. Osborne said that’s partly because CORVA is still doing work to get approval from ERCOT for grid connectivity.

“The company is still in their due diligence phase. They needed control of the property, or at least a contract on the property, to be able to go to get their approvals for their interconnect, which is what they do through ERCOT,” he said. “If they don’t get that interconnect, the whole deal goes away.”

LEDA acquired the land in 2007; Osborne said since he got to LEDA in 2010, its been zoned for light industrial facilities.


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The data center will be built near an electrical substation, and Osborne confirmed LEDA has already approved additional space for that station to expand if needed.

“The substation itself, handles power for all of northeast Lubbock. We just didn’t want it to be boxed in for the long term growth of the area,” he said.

Osborne reiterated that this project is being built within existing codes and will not use excessive resources, although LEDA has turned down projects that might have.

“This is a relatively small user in, in the world of manufacturing and data centers,” he said. “We have actually turned away projects that totaled $25 billion over the last 18 months because they were projects that used too much water. Many of those were were, hyperscale data centers, but not all of them. We try very much to listen to what the community was looking for and wanting.”