Mr. Bland, a Texas farmer in his 70s, saw that the neighborhood children had no safe place to run around and made a quiet decision in 1999. He'd give 87 acres of his land for $10 so kids could have a park. More than two decades later, that same land is being cleared for a 135,000-square-foot data center, just 500 feet from the home of the woman who has spent the last year fighting to stop it.
According to an investigation by 404 Media from the original deed from July 7, 1999, it was clear that the 87.97 acres in Taylor, Texas, were “held in trust for future use as parkland.” That deed is still on record. But in a series of transfers that eventually spanned nearly three decades, the land was eventually sold by the Taylor Economic Development Corporation (TEDC) to data center developer Blueprint for $10 million in 2025.
From a $10 handshake to a $10 million deal
The story of how parkland becomes a data center is really the story of how legal language is quietly worked around, one transaction at a time.
In 1999, Bland and his family sold the land to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation for $10, with the understanding that it would be used as a park. That foundation transferred the land to the Williamson County Park Foundation in 2003, which then transferred it to the City of Taylor in the same year. In 2008, the city sold it to the TEDC for $15,000. Then, in 2025, the TEDC sold it to Blueprint for $10 million, a stunning jump from what was supposed to be a permanent gift to the community.
For longtime resident Pamela Griffin, who grew up playing on that land and saw her own children do the same, the news of the data center plan in 2025 was a gut punch. At first she didn't know what a data center was. She looked it up with her family and was immediately alarmed and the fact that it would sit just 500 feet from her front door made it personal in an impossible-to-ignore way.
