Dallas Market Hall, a longtime exhibition venue that has hosted trade shows, concerts and presidential events for more than six decades, could be demolished as part of a planned data center campus in the city’s Stemmons Corridor.
New city zoning records indicate the historic building sits within the footprint of a proposed 40-acre, 245-megawatt data center campus being developed by Dallas-based Crow Holdings in partnership with Arlington-based CleanArc Data Centers.
When the project was first announced in January, Crow Holdings said the development would be built on a vacant portion of the property. However, zoning confirmation requests filed in April and July show the planned campus now extends onto the land occupied by Market Hall.
Neither Crow Holdings nor CleanArc has confirmed whether the exhibition hall will be demolished, and both companies declined to comment on the site’s future.
Market Hall No Longer Booking Events
Although no official closing date has been announced, Dallas Market Center officials acknowledged the building is no longer accepting future bookings.
“Dallas Market Center stopped booking future events at Market Hall months ago as strategic redevelopment options are evaluated,” Senior Vice President Cole Daugherty said, Fox 4 KDFW reported.
The venue’s final scheduled event is expected to take place this weekend.
Opened in 1960, Market Hall was once promoted as the world’s largest privately owned exhibition hall. Over the decades, it has hosted presidential visits, concerts, trade shows, consumer expos and community events.
Dallas Market Center, which operates separately from Market Hall, continues to operate its nearby wholesale marketplace and said only the exhibition hall is affected.
Data Center Project Moves Forward
According to project documents, the five-story facility is designed to support artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads.
“The campus will be designed from the inside out to support a wide range of power densities, high-efficiency cooling technologies, and Tier III electrical redundancy,” according to project materials cited by Fox 4.
The first phase of the campus is expected to provide 70 megawatts of capacity by late 2027, although developers have not released a construction timeline.
An active building permit for the property remains valid through December 2027.
Because the property is already zoned MU-3 mixed-use, the project can proceed administratively without requiring approval from the Dallas City Council.
Data Centers Continue Expanding Across North Texas
The proposed redevelopment comes as Dallas-Fort Worth has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing data center markets, driven by demand for artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital infrastructure.
The rapid expansion has also sparked debate across Texas over the impact large data centers could have on electricity demand, water resources and surrounding communities.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has joined a bipartisan coalition urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to address data center regulation, arguing the issue cannot wait until lawmakers reconvene next year.
Abbott’s office has said the governor supports requiring data centers to pay for their own infrastructure, provide their own power resources where possible, reuse water and avoid shifting costs to residential customers.
Industry representatives, including the Data Center Coalition, argue the projects create construction jobs, attract investment and support long-term economic growth throughout Texas.
For now, the future of Market Hall remains uncertain, but city records indicate the site’s redevelopment plans could bring an end to one of Dallas’ best-known event venues.