Project Longhorn: A $366M Data Center Was Filed in Cedar Creek. Here's What the State Record Says

A state filing registered on Oct. 7, 2026 describes a $366 million, 498,165-square-foot data center called "Project Longhorn – Building One" on Earl Callahan Road in Cedar Creek, about 26 miles southeast of downtown Austin, Texas. According to ATX Things' read of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) record, work is slated to start Nov. 30, 2026 and finish by Jan. 31, 2028. The filing names no tenant, and as of today we could not confirm who is behind it.

What does the state filing actually say?

TDLR's Texas Accessibility Standards (TABS) program takes a registration for most commercial construction, and the registrations are public. This one, number TABS2027002962, lists:

Source: TDLR TABS registration TABS2027002962, as of Oct. 8, 2026. The address on the record is approximate, which is why it reads "near" a cross road.

Map: Google. The pin is the approximate location from the TDLR record, not a surveyed property line.

Two details are worth slowing down on. First, the owner is listed as an individual, not a company, and the filing does not say what that person's role is. A single name on a registration like this is often a placeholder for a land-holding arrangement, but that is a guess, so we are not naming anyone or reading anything into it. Second, the filing says "Building One" and "new campus." That language implies more buildings. It does not tell us how many.

Is this the Pacifico Energy project on Earl Callahan Road?

Maybe. We can't say, and nobody else has either.

Community Impact reported on July 23 that Pacifico Energy is considering a 2,842-acre campus on Earl Callahan Road that would pair a hyperscale data center with 710 megawatts of natural gas-fired generation. Per that reporting, Pacifico's state incentive application lists a $2.2 billion investment, 25 permanent jobs and $6.2 million in annual payroll, and two 100% county tax-abatement applications and two mass-grading permit applications were under review. KXAN reported on Aug. 10 that Bastrop County is reviewing a 1,451-acre version of the project and that a permit to prepare the site for a gas-powered energy facility was issued July 23. Pacifico did not respond to either outlet.

Same road. Same county. But the TDLR filing does not mention Pacifico, a power plant, or a tenant, the owner of record is an individual, and the numbers don't line up: $366 million is a fraction of $2.2 billion. They could be the same campus, a neighbor, or unrelated. Until someone on the record says which, treat it as unlinked.

AI-generated illustration, not a photo of the site.

Why does this matter if you live nowhere near Cedar Creek?

Because Cedar Creek has turned into one of the densest clusters of data center filings in Central Texas, and the state record lets you count it. We queried every TDLR registration in Bastrop County with "data center" in the scope of work, registered since July 1, 2025. That returned 10 filings, including this one:

Source: TDLR TABS registrations, Bastrop County, queried Oct. 8, 2026 from ATX Things' copy of the state data. Costs are the estimates owners put on each registration.

Add the ten estimates and you get roughly $6.2 billion as filed. That is a sum of estimates, not money spent, and we have not checked whether any of these registrations duplicate one another. Several rows share an address and a cost, which is what separate buildings on one campus would look like, but it is not proof.

The pattern is the point: nine of the ten sit along FM 535 or Wolf Lane, under project names beginning "EDC" or "ECX." Community Impact reports that EdgeConneX is planning three Cedar Creek campuses of 19 buildings along FM 535; the filings list other owner entities, so we are not attributing them, but the geography matches. Project Longhorn is the one filing on this list that is not on that corridor, and it sits on the other side of the area.

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Just stop. Hold up. This is getting away from us. We have got to put some guardrails around this industry, or we're gonna be in a huge train wreck. — Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, at a July 22 data center town hall in Bastrop, as reported by Community Impact

What are people in Bastrop County already arguing about?

The same four questions come up in the reporting we read. Residents at the July 22 town hall, which drew more than 100 people, asked when air quality, groundwater and noise studies would be public. A proposed Bastrop County tax-abatement policy would require applicants to disclose environmental impacts and create at least 25 full-time jobs. Hays County paused discretionary approvals for high-water-use industrial projects on June 23. At the Capitol, lawmakers are scrutinizing the cost of data center tax incentives.

We are not taking a side on whether data centers belong in Bastrop County. What a reader can do with a filing like this one is check it against the questions above: is a tax abatement requested, how much power and water does it need, and who will be the neighbor.

What happens next?

Registration is early. Per the filing, construction would start Nov. 30. A registration is not a building permit, and a TDLR record does not show whether utilities, county approvals or financing are in place. We will watch the same record for a tenant name, a status change or a second building, and we will log any change here with a dated note.

If you live in or near Cedar Creek and know something about this site, or you are the owner or designer and want to add context, email the desk through the contact page. Corrections will be added to this article with a date.

What locals should know

• The filing is real and public. Its meaning is not yet clear.
• The record's address is approximate and the place is rural; there is no storefront or public viewing point to visit.
• Cedar Creek is in Bastrop County, outside the City of Austin, so city approvals do not apply.
• For the broader Austin-area construction picture, see our October 2026 Austin Development Report, published Oct. 2.

FAQ

How big is a 498,165-square-foot building? About eleven acres of floor space under one roof, roughly the footprint of eight to nine football fields. It is one story, so the building itself would be very large and flat. This is our arithmetic from the filing's square footage, not a figure from the filing.

Who owns Project Longhorn? The TDLR record lists an individual as the owner and no tenant. We could not confirm the end user, and we are not naming the individual because the filing does not describe their role.

Is it connected to Pacifico Energy? Unconfirmed. Pacifico is proposing a larger campus on the same road, but the TDLR filing does not mention it. No outlet we found has linked the two.

When would it open? The filing lists a Jan. 31, 2028 completion date. Registered dates are estimates and often move.

Where do these numbers come from? The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation's TABS project registrations, pulled from ATX Things' copy of the state data on Oct. 8, 2026. Reporting on the Pacifico proposal is from Community Impact (July 23, 2026) and KXAN (Aug. 10, 2026).