On the edge of Wichita Falls, Skybox Datacenters is lining up a massive data center campus that local leaders say could give the city’s tax base a serious jolt. The project is set to start with a roughly 150,000-square-foot facility and stretch across a multi hundred acre site, with more buildings planned in later phases. Company representatives and city officials say the campus is being tailored for AI and other high performance computing workloads, and the first building could be up and running by late 2028.
What Skybox Is Building
Skybox has bought a 225-acre tract inside the Wichita Falls Business Park and is branding the development as PowerCampus Texas, a multi phase complex that could ultimately span several hundred acres. Planning documents and marketing materials describe room for up to 2 million square feet of data center space, private onsite power substations, and low latency fiber routes tying the site back to Dallas. As reported by DataCenterDynamics.
Local Officials And Jobs
City leaders and Skybox executives are pitching the project as both a jobs play and a long-term boost to the commercial tax base. Skybox told local officials it expects to hire roughly 200 to 350 employees once the full multi building campus is in operation, a mix of technical, facilities, and support roles. The city manager has said that a stronger commercial tax base could help ease the burden on homeowners over time.
Residents have not been shy about raising questions, pressing company representatives on water use and potential infrastructure strain. Skybox has responded that any needed utility upgrades for the campus would be funded by the developer rather than handed to local taxpayers. As reported by NewsChannel6.
Rezoning And Competing Proposals
Skybox is not the only data center game in town. A separate application seeks to rezone roughly 37 acres along Airport Drive that could be folded into a nearly 98-acre data center campus proposed by local attorney Brad Altman. His plan sketches out as many as nine buildings totaling about 1.35 million square feet.
The city’s planning commission has already recommended approval of that rezoning, but the City Council hit pause and tabled the request at an early February meeting. Taken together, the parallel pitches suggest Wichita Falls is suddenly on the radar for multiple large compute campuses as data hungry AI and cloud workloads keep growing. As reported by Oklahoma Energy Today.
Why Wichita Falls
For Skybox, the sales pitch starts with power and geography. The Wichita Falls site sits in Oncor’s deregulated service territory, which the company says lets customers tap 100 percent renewable energy programs while connecting through private onsite substations. Marketing materials also tout round trip network latency of under three milliseconds to Dallas’s Infomart carrier hub.
On the more practical side, Skybox highlights easy access to I-44 and US-287 and a drive of about two hours to both the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and Oklahoma City, positioning the campus as a regional node between two major markets. As noted on Skybox’s PowerCampus page.
Where Skybox Fits Regionally
The Wichita Falls project is part of a broader Texas and national buildout for Skybox. The company has announced or listed developments in Houston, Round Rock, and San Angelo, along with operations in Santa Clara, California. Industry coverage notes that Skybox has teamed up with large industrial landlords on several PowerCampus projects and previously sold a Houston facility to Element Critical as it refines its powered campus model.
Those moves help explain why smaller North Texas cities like Wichita Falls are now being courted for big digital infrastructure investments instead of watching everything land inside the traditional Dallas data center corridor. As reported by DataCenterDynamics.
Zoning, Permits And Next Steps
For now, most of the action will be in meeting rooms rather than on construction sites. Skybox still needs to navigate public hearings, zoning approvals, and a round of permits before heavy equipment rolls onto the land. Company officials say they hope to lock in a tenant later this year and still have the first building online by late 2028, if approvals and site work stay on schedule.
City Council deliberations on rezoning and related public hearings will set the timeline for when shovels actually hit dirt. City staff and Skybox representatives say they are also comparing notes with other Texas communities that have hosted large data center projects, looking for lessons on everything from utility planning to neighborhood communication. As reported by NewsChannel6.
