Memphis has paused a nearly 10-year-old plan to extend Paul R. Lowry Road, the roadway that runs past Elon Musk's sprawling Colossus 1 supercomputer site in Southwest Memphis, after residents in the historic Boxtown neighborhood said construction traffic tied to the data center has brought constant digging, dust, and heavy trucks to their streets. Mayor Paul Young said the city will now reexamine whether the project should move forward at all.
The proposed extension, first envisioned in 2017, would stretch between 2.2 and 2.7 miles to create a second access point into the Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park, home to the Colossus 1 data center now run by Elon Musk's SpaceX/xAI, according to Action News 5. City leaders have floated several options, including connecting the road to U.S. 61 through a new stretch south of Robco Lake, linking it to Shelby Drive with improvements ending at Weaver Road, or scrapping the extension altogether and doing nothing. As of September 2026, city leaders say no option has been selected and no construction has been approved.
Boxtown Residents Describe Daily Disruption
Young said residents have raised concerns about the extension's effects on streets, homes, and quality of life, calling those complaints legitimate. Boxtown, the report notes, was founded shortly after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation as a settlement for emancipated Black residents and endured decades of municipal neglect that left many homes without indoor plumbing or paved roads well into the late 20th century, according to StoryBoard Memphis. That history helps explain why residents are especially sensitive to the digging, dust, and truck noise they say has accompanied the data center's rapid buildout.
Young said the city must reassess whether the decade-old proposed solution remains appropriate given how much has changed at the industrial park since 2017. During the pause, the city says it will collaborate with residents as well as state and federal partners, reevaluate the project's purpose and need, examine current conditions on the ground, and decide whether further study is necessary before any decision is made.
A Former Appliance Plant Turned AI Powerhouse
The scale of what has risen inside the industrial park helps explain why traffic has intensified so sharply. The Colossus 1 site sits inside a 217-acre, 785,000-square-foot building that a SpaceX subsidiary bought for $185 million in May 2026 from a Phoenix Investors affiliate, according to Commercial Property Executive. The building itself dates to 2013, when it opened as a 750,000-square-foot Electrolux appliance plant built with $137 million in public subsidies, before Electrolux shut down production there in June 2022, per YourSource News.
What now runs inside that former factory is a computing cluster of enormous scale. The Colossus 1 supercomputer houses more than 150,000 GPUs, with the developer's expansion plans aiming for up to 1 million GPUs at Colossus 1 by 2026, according to Datacenters.com. The buildout also required a 150-megawatt electrical substation, per the Obedio account. The Greater Memphis Chamber has called the arrival the largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history, according to CoStar News.
Tax Dollars Meant to Flow Back to the Neighborhood
City leaders have debated how to address the industrial intrusion through tax policy. Hoodline previously covered the council debate over data-center funding, and Mayor Young has discussed the city's role in responding to xAI's footprint.
The stakes extend beyond one road. The Memphis metro area faces a shortage of more than 38,000 affordable housing units, keeping housing among the broader issues facing city leaders. That broader context places the road debate alongside other neighborhood concerns.
Why the Road Was Planned in the First Place
The proposed Paul R. Lowry Road extension was intended to create a second access point for the Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park. That original rationale is now being reconsidered as conditions at the industrial park have changed. The xAI cluster's expansion to Tulane Road, known as Colossus II, is another sign of how quickly the surrounding industrial landscape has shifted.
SpaceX has continued expanding what runs on the hardware inside the Memphis cluster, including a $6.3 billion AI compute deal with Reflection that Hoodline reported in June. For now, though, the immediate question in Southwest Memphis is narrower: whether a road meant to serve industrial trucks should be built at all, or whether the city can find another way to relieve the pressure Boxtown residents say they are already living with.
