$5M Incentive for Digital Realty Dallas Campus

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One of the buildings at Datacenter Park, the Digital Realty Trust campus in Richardson, Texas.

The city of Richardson, Texas is offering $5 million in incentives to Datacenter Park, the 800,000 square foot campus being built by Digital Realty Trust. Richardson officials said the project could eventually generate as much as $160 million in revenue for the city from taxes on land and electricity.

The City Council unanimously approvec the incentives Monday night. But Digital Realty wasn't waiting on the incentives, and last week announced that it has completed the first two leases at the project. The REIT said it had leased one data center to a Fortune 500 global company, and another to a "leading IT service provider" (a previously announced lease to Terremark Worldwide).     

Digital Realty acquired 60 percent of the former Collins Technology Park through a joint venture with previous property owner Skyrise Properties/Fobare Development.  The 69-acre property includes seven buildings ranging from 15,000 to 250,000 square feet, with a total of 797,000 square feet. An on-site 40 megawatt substation can be expanded to 125 megawatts, with fiber connectivity from multiple providers.

"Datacenter Park - Dallas is being developed into the premier data center facility in the southwestern United States, and has the potential to serve as a major engine for economic growth in the Dallas metro area," said Brent Behrman, Vice President of Global Sales for Digital Realty Trust. "The site's size, power, location and flexibility make it very attractive for companies pursuing data center projects."

The incentive will be in the form of a tax incentive financing (TIF) grant of $5 million, which can be used to defray infrastructure improvements over the life of the project.

"A TIF mechanism is fair to a developer and the city because the developer will only receive this tax benefit if the project is successful," developer Tod Fobare told the Dallas News. "The TIF funding helped us attract Digital Realty Trust as our managing partner."