Latter-day Saints Farmland Reserve to Lease Part of Triangle Ranch for Proposed Data Center Near Paducah, Texas

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, operating through two of its farming subsidiaries, has agreed to lease thousands of acres in the Texas Panhandle for the construction of a large data center. According to public documents, Farmland Reserve, a church-owned nonprofit, would lease up to 3,710 acres of the roughly 100,000-acre portion it owns of the historic Triangle Ranch in rural Cottle County to a private company, Aetheris, to build a 96-megawatt facility. The project would be just short of “hyperscale” proportions and would consume as much electricity as roughly 75,000 average U.S. households.

Church-owned AgReserves, a for-profit business, is acting as the church’s operational agent in Texas. In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, AgReserves described the project as a natural extension of Farmland Reserve’s “long-term investment strategy,” which includes “leasing portions of its properties for agricultural, renewable energy and other compatible commercial uses.” The same statement said Aetheris is an independent company, “not affiliated with Farmland Reserve or the church, and is responsible for the proposed project and related development activities.” It added that the portions of Triangle Ranch not leased to Aetheris will continue as a working cattle ranch.

According to Aetheris’ filings, as described in public documents, the company also plans to build a 180-megawatt natural gas plant on the leased land to power the center. The data center, which Aetheris has named Project Matter, is planned for an area about 15 miles east of Paducah, a town of barely 1,000 residents and the only incorporated municipality in Cottle County. The first phase would span 729 acres leased from Farmland Reserve. Future phases could expand the total footprint to 4,252 acres, with 3,710 acres leased from the church’s farming affiliate and another 542 acres leased from another county landowner.

The site is a sprawl of native grassland near the Texas-Oklahoma line. According to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s national monitor, the area suffers from a patchwork of drought and “abnormal” dryness of varying degrees. The Tribune reached out to Aetheris, which the company website says is based in Texas, for additional comment but did not receive a response.

Local residents have voiced differing views. Cottle County Judge Karl Holloway told The Tribune that a town hall on the proposed development, held by Aetheris at Paducah High School in May, drew robust attendance. Residents have “a lot of concerns,” Holloway said, and opinions vary. “Some who are for it, some who are against,” he said. “It depends on what their actual personal issue is, so it can vary a lot.”

Aetheris has said the data center’s end user is confidential. The company added that the facility would support “widely used digital services that families, businesses and communities rely on every day.”

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