College Station council rejects proposed sale of Midtown land to Priority Power after hours of public opposition

The College Station City Council on Sept. 11 voted to deny a proposed real-estate contract to sell about 200 acres in Midtown Business Park to Priority Power Management LLC for a potential data center, after an evening that stretched past midnight and featured extensive presentations by city staff and the developer and more than 70 public speakers.

The proposal, as presented by Michael Ostrovsky, the city’s chief development officer, would have put approximately 200 acres under an option at $150,000 per acre and allowed Priority Power to undertake a lengthy feasibility and due-diligence period to determine whether sufficient power and water could be brought to the site. Ostrovsky told the council that the sale would have included feasibility protections, requirements for separate power and water agreements, a sound-study requirement and a city repurchase right if development did not commence within 365 days of closing.

Brandon Schwertner, Priority Power’s CEO, said his company planned a high-performance computing/data-center development and asked the council to remove any reference to cryptocurrency mining from the option language. “That is not the desired tenant of this site,” Schwertner told the council, adding that the company would strike references to Bitcoin mining from the contract language and that many of the technical questions (for example, about how much power could be delivered) would be answered during a study the company intended to perform if it obtained an option on the land.

The developer described a range of possible scales for the project depending on power availability — from hundreds of megawatts to a smaller campus — and estimated capital expenditure in the $1 billion to $4 billion range for the largest scenarios. Schwertner said site designs now rely on closed-loop cooling and that, in his view, modern AI-focused facilities are quieter and more efficient than earlier cryptocurrency mining operations.

But nearly every public speaker who addressed the council voiced opposition to moving forward. Residents, HOAs, local engineers, medical professionals and neighborhood activists stressed several recurring concerns: the risk that backup generators and cooling equipment would create a constant low-frequency noise for nearby homes and institutions; the strain on local water supplies and the aquifer if large cooling or evaporative systems were used; the challenge of bringing hundreds of megawatts of power to the site (including transmission easements and potential eminent-domain routes); and the experience of other Texas communities that have reported neighborhood health and property-value impacts after nearby high-power data or crypto facilities were built.

Shelby Behm, who said she represents Midtown residents, told the council the Midtown vision of a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood would be undermined by a fenced data center that would offer relatively few permanent jobs and consume large amounts of utilities. “This real estate contract is just another piece of evidence that the city has abandoned that original vision,” she said. Other residents said the Friday-afternoon release of the contract and the short public notice period had undercut community trust.

Council members questioned the developer in detail about noise testing methodologies, how cooling would be handled, whether tenants would bring their own power, and how the city would enforce noise or water restrictions. Staff emphasized sections of the draft option that preserved city rights — including a repurchase right and a provision that either party could terminate if required power or water agreements could not be reached during feasibility — and noted that the developer would need to perform long lead-time studies before a project could be designed or permitted.

After the public comment period and a period of council discussion about process and public trust, Councilmember McElhinney moved that the council deny the real estate contract; the motion was seconded and carried unanimously. Mayor John P. Nichols then thanked residents for their engagement and said staff would continue to work on Midtown planning and on improved public engagement practices.

What happens next: The denial halts the particular sale under consideration; the council asked staff to return with options, to pursue a public workshop on Midtown’s long-term planning and to schedule a follow-up review of UDO language tied to occupancy rules required by a new state law (Senate Bill 1567). City staff also noted that separate developers, alternative buyers or different project scales could be pursued in the future, but any future proposal would need to address the same utility, noise and land-use constraints discussed at length on Sept. 11.

Votes and motion: A motion to deny the real estate contract with Priority Power Management LLC for the Midtown parcel was made by Councilmember McElhinney and seconded by Councilmember White; the motion carried unanimously. The denial applies to the specific contract and option presented to council that evening.

Reporter’s note: Quotes in this article come from the council record and public testimony during the City of College Station City Council meeting on Sept. 11, 2025. The council’s action rejected the specific real-estate transaction as presented; it does not prohibit separate proposals that would follow different terms or locations.