The Wichita Falls Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday voted to allow use of a building in the north part of the city as a data center.
The panel approved the conditional use request from Dallas-based DataNovaX to create a $1 billion data center at 2236 Airport Drive.
It will be located in a 37,000 square-foot building that was built in 1992 and formerly housed a Food Lion grocery store and several call center operations.
The city's director of development services, Fabian Medellin said the center would use a capacity of up to 12 megawatts, which is below the threshold of 75 megawatts Gov. Greg Abbott has set for a state review of data center applications.
Medellin said the center would use an air-cooling system similar to those used in big box retail stores, and its water consumption would be for typical domestic needs.
He said the center agreed to meet several conditions, such as screening off certain parts of the operation, placing some fencing, maintaining landscaping trees and meeting sound and lighting limitations.
Company spokesman Justin Mahan said DataNovaX would not be "a big hyperscale space."
"It's definitely not a big campus that everybody keeps hearing about across social media," he said.
More: Camp Fire pauses after-school programs due to funding problems
More: Wichita Falls candidate reveals results of ethics complaint
Mahan said the company does not need anything more than what is already approved for the site.
"We don't see this facility is going to have any negative impact on the area or on the community itself," he said.
Medellin said the petition approved Wednesday was limited to the existing building and any additional buildings in the future would require separate approval
DataNovaX's website said a second phase would include a 550,000-square-foot facility with 150 MW of power for high-density artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Wichita Falls panel OKs data center location