A $366 million data center campus known as Project Longhorn is moving forward in Cedar Creek, Texas, after getting tangled up in a statewide regulatory pause earlier this year. The development, located within Bastrop County about 26 miles southeast of Austin, is reportedly in talks with Anthropic PBC, the California-based AI safety and research company behind the Claude family of large language models. Construction is now expected to begin in late November, with completion targeted for the end of January 2028.
The project hit a roadblock after Governor Greg Abbott ordered a pause on new state permits for data center projects, according to MySA. That pause traces back to a directive detailed by The Texas Tribune, which reported that Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt all environmental permit approvals for data center projects until ERCOT and the Texas Water Development Board complete a statewide audit. The freeze applied broadly across the state, not just to Bastrop County, but Project Longhorn's construction filings indicate the campus is now back in motion.
First Building Takes Shape Near Earl Callahan Road
Project Longhorn's first building is planned for a site near Earl Callahan Road and Walter Hoffman Road in Cedar Creek. State filings describe a 498,165-square-foot, Type II-B construction data center and business building, built as a new one-story structure. The scope includes civil site work for structural and MEPF trades, the same filings show, per the MySA report.
The pause that briefly stalled the project stemmed from pressure building across the entire Texas grid. ERCOT's interconnection queue had swelled to roughly 474 gigawatts of requested new power demand, more than five times the grid's record peak demand, with data centers accounting for approximately 90% of all new requests, according to Utility Dive. That surge prompted the governor's statewide audit before any additional data center capacity could move forward.
A Much Bigger Development Taking Shape Around It
Project Longhorn is just one piece of a sprawling build-out underway in Cedar Creek. EdgeConneX is developing three separate campuses in the area, with nine state filings totaling an estimated $5.84 billion in construction costs across 5.83 million square feet, Community Impact Newspaper reported. One of those, Campus No. 2 at 6402 and 6682 FM 535, represents roughly $4 billion across six planned buildings. Separately, EdgeConneX has filed plans for two data center buildings at 6402 FM 535 in Cedar Creek carrying a total estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
Bastrop County now has multiple major data center projects and campuses in various stages of development, reflecting a broader pattern across Central Texas. Hoodline's earlier reporting on EdgeConneX's initial $440 million building on a 130-acre campus showed the scale of investment flowing into the region even before Project Longhorn's filings surfaced. Public disclosures from a July 2026 town hall in Bastrop revealed more than 5,500 acres across the Cedar Creek area tied to planned or prospective data center developments, Hoodline reported in its coverage of the Pacifico data center's water deal.
State Scrutiny Extends Beyond the Power Grid
The permitting freeze wasn't limited to electricity concerns. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a statewide investigation in late September into hundreds of data center developments after state water surveys revealed widespread noncompliance with water-use reporting mandates, according to legal analysis published by Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. An official press release from the Office of the Texas Governor confirmed that state agencies are barred from granting regulatory approvals to data center developments until the Public Utility Commission of Texas, ERCOT, and the Texas Water Development Board review completed audit data.
EdgeConneX, the developer behind the larger Cedar Creek campus hub, has publicly backed the state's oversight push. In an August statement, the company said it plans to use air-cooled or closed-loop water systems and will fully fund all project-specific power infrastructure so costs are not shifted to residential utility ratepayers. That funding commitment echoes a broader mandate from Abbott's June 10 executive directive, which DLA Piper reported requires data center developers to fully bear the capital costs of new electrical transmission and supply infrastructure needed to connect to the ERCOT grid.
Texas's Data Center Boom Faces a Costly Pause
Texas is currently the fastest-growing data center market in the country and the second-largest behind Virginia, according to legal analysis from Latham & Watkins LLP. That growth has drawn scrutiny at a massive scale: Bank of America estimated that up to 50 gigawatts of planned Texas data center capacity could be affected by the state's regulatory holds, potentially impacting $8 billion in capital deployments through early 2027, per financial analysis from BigGo Finance.
For Cedar Creek, the open questions are less about national trends and more about what happens next in the fields and ranchland surrounding Earl Callahan Road. How Project Longhorn and its neighboring EdgeConneX campuses will ultimately clear ongoing multi-agency state audits, how much power and water the combined campuses will consume, and how Bastrop County residents respond as thousands of rural acres convert into AI computing infrastructure all remain unresolved as construction crews prepare to break ground late next month.
