Proposed $384 million data center advances near Royse City

A 100,000-square-foot data center with a $384 million price tag moved another step forward at 4989 County Road 2656 outside Royse City, and the filing now ties the project to BT Gateway Data Center LLC and Belltown Power. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation record shows the project was registered June 23, 2026, with construction slated to start August 1 and finish February 12, 2027.

The site sits in Hunt County, not Rockwall County, but it is close enough to Royse City and the I-30 corridor to matter for both communities. The filing says the project is privately funded, on private land and for private use, a structure that points to a large industrial build rather than a public works project or a short-term speculative parcel play.

The Belltown connection gives the filing broader weight. Belltown Power’s own materials say the company specializes in greenfield development of utility-scale solar projects, and its website has listed a Texas data-center portfolio of ten sites totaling 4.1 gigawatts. That puts the Royse City-area project inside a much larger energy and infrastructure strategy, not just a one-off building on county road frontage.

That scale is what will draw the most attention from local officials and nearby residents. A facility of this size could increase demand on power systems, complicate water planning, add truck and contractor traffic during the buildout period and sharpen the debate over how much industrial tax base the Royse City area wants to absorb. Even without a Rockwall County address, the project lands in a corridor already defined by fast growth, utility planning and land-use pressure.

The filing also comes against a backdrop of growing data-center development across Texas. State maps now show hundreds of operating or planned facilities, underscoring how quickly the sector has expanded beyond the state’s largest metros and into smaller communities along major highways.

Belltown’s earlier push in Leon County shows how quickly these proposals can become local flashpoints. The company previously pursued a 900-acre, 1.5-gigawatt data-center project near Marquez, and opposition there centered on the scale of the proposal and its impact on rural communities. Similar resistance also surfaced around a separate proposal in Quinlan.

For Royse City-area residents, the next checkpoints will be the permits, utility commitments and any local approvals that have to line up before the August start date holds. Those are the steps that will determine whether this $384 million filing becomes a construction site, or stays a line in the state record.