Round Rock council approves rezoning for Skybox data center after extended public hearing

The Round Rock City Council voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance rezoning roughly 29.69 acres east of North A.W. Grimes Boulevard to Planned Unit Development No. 159, clearing the way for a Skybox data center on the northern portion of the tract.

Bradley, the city planning presenter, told the council the PUD restricts the site to one primary data-center building and adds several conditions staff negotiated after neighborhood meetings: a maximum building height of 60 feet, a maximum building area of 250,000 square feet, a cap of 75 megawatts of grid-connected power, an 80-foot open-space strip with a 25-foot landscape buffer along the southern property line, and a requirement that data-center cooling use a closed-loop system to limit water consumption. “We limited the site to one primary data center building that has a maximum height of 60 feet, a maximum size of 250,000 square feet, and a maximum of 75 megawatts of grid-connected power,” Bradley said during the staff…