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(HEADWATERS SITE DEVELOPMENT | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) A portion of an example of Project Saltworks that was presented to the Graham City Council and community Thursday, Dec. 4. No hyperscale user has been identified for the project in Young County.
The Graham City Council will make a determination this week on moving forward with negotiations regarding a potential development agreement with a data center developer.
The city council will meet Thursday, Dec. 18 to consider authorizing City Manager Eric Garretty to engage with representatives of Stream Data Centers and Headwaters Site Development. That approval could result in a letter of intent to pursue a development agreement.
The Project Saltworks data center is proposed on 867 acres of land between FM 61 and FM 209.
The project will support up to 15 data center buildings, substations and on-site infrastructure that the company said will be set back from property lines and local residences.
Garretty said Thursday, Dec. 4 that there were no pending requests from any developer requesting annexation into the city or economic development incentives pending from Headwaters or Stream.
Stream Data Centers Chief Development Officer and Headwaters Senior VP of Development Oisín Ó Murchú said they would look into a city abatement should an annexation occur.
The company said it wants all available taxing entities to benefit from the added taxable value added from the proposed project.
“Everybody out here should benefit from this development,” Murchú said. “We didn’t talk about annexing (with the city of Graham). We talked about a development agreement with impact fees, where they would extend water service and sewer service to the property and we would enter into a development agreement that would have impact fees for municipal services.”
The agreement with the company and the city is not formalized and will be explored by the company at a later period.
“We intend, I’d say over the next probably two months to try and formalize that ask, be it through annexation or be it through a development agreement, to ensure that the city gets revenue from this development that helps us improve its water service, sewer service, pave roads and fund the fire department, provide whatever services the city needs to do,” Murchú said.
Murchú said cities and counties prefer Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) through an abatement because it is predictable revenue that they can plan for in their budgets.
“From the perspective of the PILOT structure, generally it’s around the predictability for the local area,” Murchú said. “There’s significant cost associated with bringing in this scale of a development here so the reason for the ask (for the abatement) is to help with that initial cost of development.”
Unlike industry or manufacturing facilities, Murchú said the data centers refresh their technology so there is no equipment depreciation over time.
“The equipment is refreshed, so the tax value actually refreshes and stays consistent over time, so you don’t have that fallout,” he said.
The company said that once they start showing up on Young County Commissioners Court meeting agendas, they are anticipating it will take approximately two to three months before an abatement is presented.
The data center company held an open house Thursday and will have two additional meetings scheduled for Jan. 13, 2026 and Jan. 29, 2026, with locations pending.
Murchú said the developers want to make sure they have an agreement in place for the taxing entities to make sure they are covered.
“What we want to do is engage, put a plan together and get the plan written in a contract and a document so it’s a commitment that the development has to meet that way, if it’s Stream, or whoever it is, they have to live up to that requirement,” Murchú said.
