Is there a second hyperscale data center on the horizon?

Sabey Data Centers is not a technology company in the traditional sense. It does not manufacture computers, operate a social-media platform or sell artificial-intelligence software.

Instead, the Seattle-based company develops, owns and operates the specialized buildings where large customers place and run their computer systems. Sabey provides the land, buildings, electrical infrastructure, cooling systems, security, fiber connections and other equipment needed to keep thousands of servers operating continuously. Its customers can include cloud-computing companies, universities, government agencies and other large organizations that lease space or power capacity inside Sabey facilities.

That distinction is important in understanding what Sabey is doing near Oklaunion.

Through affiliated company NPDC LLC, Sabey has assembled 1,245 acres along FM 2897 and previously marketed the site as a potential data-center campus of up to 200 megawatts. State records now show Sabey was conducting physical site investigation there by August 2024, when at least three 100-foot test holes were drilled along FM 2897.

But Sabey has not publicly identified the company that ultimately would use the computing capacity at the proposed Oklaunion campus, and public records do not yet show construction of the data-center buildings themselves. Sabey’s investment partner, National Real Estate Advisors, continues to classify the project as pre-development.

The distinction between developer and end user also helps explain why Sabey can spend years assembling land, evaluating a site, arranging utilities and marketing future capacity before a customer is publicly identified or a building begins to rise.

The following series examines what Sabey has actually done at Oklaunion, how the project compares with its completed and under-construction data centers around the country, what its Round Rock campus shows about the potential local impact, and the major questions that remain about power, water, construction timing and the eventual customer.

Part 1

Three test holes, 1,245 acres trace Sabey’s path toward an Oklaunion data center

Long before a Sabey data-center building has begun to take shape on the horizon near Oklaunion, crews working for the company were drilling into the ground along FM 2897.

Newly located state records show Sabey Properties LLC had at least three test holes drilled at separate locations along FM 2897 on Aug. 14, 2024, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that the company has gone beyond simply acquiring land for its proposed North Texas data-center campus.

Each hole was drilled to a depth of 100 feet using an air-rotary drilling method. Each was subsequently plugged.

The State of Texas Well Reports identify Sabey Properties LLC, using the company’s Tukwila, Washington, address, as the owner. One is identified as owner well No. 2, another as owner well No. 3 and a third carries no owner well number. All three reports identify the work as a test hole or testhole and give the location as FM 2897, Oklaunion, in Wilbarger County.

The reports are significant because they document physical work by a Sabey entity in the proposed development area nearly two years before county appraisal records showed a major expansion of the company’s land holdings.

They do not, however, establish that Sabey found or developed a water supply.

The reports list the proposed use as “domestic,” but contain no water-level information, pump information or well-test results. The holes were plugged after drilling. They therefore should not be characterized as production wells or evidence that Sabey intends to pump groundwater to cool a data center.

What they do establish is that Sabey was conducting subsurface investigation at multiple points along FM 2897 by August 2024.

That adds an important step to a development trail that now includes test drilling, land assembly and years of marketing a large North Texas data-center project — but still stops short of a publicly documented start of construction on the data-center buildings themselves.

National Real Estate Advisors, Sabey’s longtime investment partner, continues to list SDC North Texas in Oklaunion as a data-center investment with the status “Pre-Development.” It lists no rentable square footage for the project.

That is substantially different from Sabey projects in Round Rock, Texas; Ashburn, Virginia; and Umatilla, Oregon, where construction announcements, state registrations, contractors, utility infrastructure and visible building work provide unmistakable evidence that construction is underway.

At Oklaunion, Sabey has not reached that publicly documented stage.

It has, however, accumulated considerably more land than previously known.