Fort Worth’s Weston Gardens has long drawn visitors seeking a quiet retreat among native plants and carefully tended grounds. Its demonstration gardens date back to the 1930s.
Sue Weston, owner of Weston Gardens, said that tranquility is now under threat.
Developer Black Mountain Power is asking the Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday to rezone 80 additional acres near the property from agricultural to light industrial use — it will add to a proposed 450-acre data center campus that would effectively surround the demonstration gardens.
Sue Weston, whose family name is synonymous with the garden center, said she has not been provided a site plan or any studies examining the project’s potential environmental impact or strain on local infrastructure.
“450 acres and you don’t know where anything goes is crazy, in my opinion,” said Weston.
Weston is urging community members to attend Tuesday’s Fort Worth council meeting, wear green, and formally oppose the rezoning request.
Kaitlynn Waldinger, an employee at Weston Gardens who would also become a neighbor to the proposed facility, said her unease centers less on the development itself than on what it could mean for the surrounding natural environment.
“It’s more of, what is it going to do to our area?” Said Waldinger. “What is it going to do to the nature out here?”
Weston echoed those concerns, warning that a development of that scale carries unpredictable consequences for the broader ecosystem — and that verbal assurances from the developer offer little comfort.
“They’ve said, ‘oh no, we’re going to try to keep what we can and if we don’t have to cut it down, we won’t,” she said, referring to conversations with Black Mountain Power. “All you need is one person with a bulldozer.”
City Councilmember Michael Crain, who does not represent Weston’s district but has voiced support for the project, acknowledged the need to weigh the development’s demands on city resources against broader economic benefits.
“You need to balance neighborhoods while at the same time we’re accepting new technologies,” Crain said. He added that officials are closely examining the facility’s projected draw on energy and water supplies.
Crain said the completed campus would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the city’s tax base and argued that the investment’s benefits deserve equal consideration.
“I think we also have to look at what are the positives that come out of this type of investment in a city,” said Councilman Michael Crain.
That argument has not satisfied Weston, who is continuing to organize neighbors and nearby communities to demand greater transparency before any additional land is rezoned.
“It can disrupt everything,” she said.