A lot of data centers are looking at Lubbock, and before the city makes decisions, Mayor Mark McBrayer wants to discuss the issue – with a lot of people.
He’s organizing a public meeting for July 7. The time is not yet finalized, but McBrayer estimated 5:30 p.m. at Lubbock Civic Center – in the Moe Turner Banquet Hall.
Update: After this story was published, the city confirmed a 5:30 p.m. start time. The city also encouraged citizens to fill out an online survey.
“We can get, I think maybe 1,000 people in there … So, we figured there’ll be a big turnout,” McBrayer said.
A data center town hall meeting in May had to limit attendance when people completely filled the Club Level in the west press box at Jones AT&T Stadium.
He’d like to avoid a circumstance where people might be kept out.
“There are a lot of them that are looking at Lubbock and wanting to be here. Yes, there are quite a few,” McBrayer said.
“We’re trying to get out in front of it. We’ve not made any agreements with anybody. … We want to get out ahead of it with the public and let them know how we are approaching the issue and dealing with all these concerns,” McBrayer said.
He mentioned water use, power use, location and noise pollution.
“All those things that everybody’s concerned about; we’re concerned about them too,” McBrayer said.
“[We’ll] then have an opportunity to hear from them before we ever get around to actually considering a particular data center,” McBrayer said.
Lubbock has made no offer to any prospective data center developer, the mayor said. But he wants to be ready.
“They’re looking at locations outside the city, but some of them would like to be incorporated into the city limits. If they go out in the county, they’re no concern of ours. There’s nothing we can do about it. But if they want to be annexed into the city, then there would be conditions we would obviously put on them.”
What would those conditions be? McBrayer said the meeting will include a City Council discussion on that very question. It will be posted as a public meeting to meet the state’s open meeting laws.
“… They would [need to] provide a significant benefit to the citizens and taxpayers at the end of the day, because if there’s not a significant benefit, there’s no reason for us to do it,” McBrayer said.
McBrayer’s former opponent in the 2026 race for mayor, Stephen Sanders, started a signature petition in early June to force the city into either accepting an 18-month moratorium on data center projects or taking the question to local voters. We covered it here.
Some of McBrayer’s concerns he voiced to LubbockLights.com overlapped with Sanders’ concerns – such as water consumption for cooling large computer networks and local power consumption.
