Rowan AUS01 data center, Temple, Texas

Rowan Digital Infrastructure is building its Project Temple data center campus in Temple, Bell County, Texas, on land at 1707 and 2351 Bob White Road that the city council approved in 2025. Rowan broke ground in January 2026 on the $700 million project, which it says could reach 300 megawatts of power at full build-out, with power secured through a partnership with Oncor and operations planned for 2027. On September 17, 2026, the Temple City Council approved new data center zoning rules and a set of agreements covering Rowan's next phase.

In May 2026 Rowan secured nearly $3 billion in debt financing for the campus, and in July a state filing showed plans for a second building, AUS02 Building 2, a $780 million, 500,000-square-foot structure at 1855 Bob White Road under construction from August 2026 to August 2027. Rowan spokesperson Nathan Brown told the Temple Daily Telegram that Project Temple's 300 megawatts come from the power allocation of the company's earlier Moriah facility nearby, which was completed in 2023, lost its tenant in 2024, and is being converted into a warehouse.

Rowan is also planning three more campus phases with six buildings in the Synergy Southeast Industrial Park, each phase worth $700 million and 40 jobs, city officials say. Phase 1B, called Project Lasso, sits on land Rowan bought to replace the site of the city's planned landfill expansion. Opponents cite a webpage of Rowan's parent, Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, describing more than 1,350 acres and 1.6 gigawatts of planned capacity in the Temple area; Brown called that figure outdated. Meta already runs a data center in Temple's Industrial Park.

Water is residents' first concern. City officials say Rowan's three new phases should average about 32,000 gallons a day combined, with a peak of about 78,200 gallons, and each building needs an initial 1.5 million gallon charge for closed-loop cooling. Under the infrastructure agreement approved September 17, Rowan will pay $38.5 million toward water and other infrastructure, including about $25 million for the South Temple Water Infrastructure Capital Program and a voluntary $13 million that includes $10 million for an aquifer storage project. The city caps each site's water use by meter, with no option to pay a fee to exceed the limit.

The Temple Daily Telegram found the city has not commissioned independent studies of the projects' water use, grid impact or noise. City officials put Project Temple's own revenue at about $7 million a year during its 10-year tax abatement, rising to about $12 million after. Mayor Tim Davis instead cited the revenue once all six of Rowan's planned buildings are complete, about $42 million a year during the abatement period, rising to $56 million afterward, and rejected criticism that the deal was a "corporate giveaway."

Residents organized as Stop the Temple Data Center, and after an April 2026 council vote to annex and rezone about 700 acres along Bob White Road for another $700 million data center, began collecting signatures to recall Mayor Davis, Mayor Pro Tem Jessica Walker and Councilman Mike Pilkington. "The water usage, the electricity usage, animals, the noise. We don't want them in Temple," resident Carly Byrd said. Davis cut off public comment at that meeting after five hours, saying, "I don't think one more question is going to move the needle on this."

At a September 3 meeting, Temple Stands Together co-founder Joe Royer said the new zoning rules would not reach projects like Rowan's: "This is never going to apply because all these large data centers go through specially negotiated plan development agreements." The rules adopted September 17 require a conditional use permit for new standalone data centers in industrial districts, plus closed-loop cooling, buffering, traffic studies and noise mitigation, but apply only to future projects; Rowan's existing phases are instead governed by its own planned-development agreements. Resident Marcie Goodfleich said the rules' 200-foot setback from homes was inadequate.

With the September 17 votes, the City of Temple now enforces Rowan's water and infrastructure limits directly through those agreements, and any further phases beyond Lasso would need their own council approval.