Pamela Griffin knocked on the door of a house in her south Taylor neighborhood on a recent Wednesday evening.
“It’s your neighbor!” she said.
Griffin was going door-to-door informing her neighbors of a lawsuit that she, along with three of her siblings and another Taylor resident, filed against Blueprint Data Centers and its nearby data center project. A judge temporarily blocked the project from moving forward as a result of the lawsuit, which claims the data center is being built on restricted land.
Griffin said she and her siblings paid the lawsuit's attorney fees using money they inherited from their parents.
"We just have to take our money that our parents saved for us for hard times and fight," she said. "We decided to fight for the community, even though it was hard to make that decision."
But, Griffin said, they can't fight alone.
That's, in part, why Taylor resident Carrie D'Anna created a local Facebook group — for the purpose of keeping residents informed of lawsuit updates.
"We realize as a community, we don't have a lot of money or a lot of power, so we have to bring our bodies and our voices, and we're just trying to bring that together and show up as much as possible, because right now, that's what we need," D'Anna said.
Griffin and the others all own property that backs up to the site where Blueprint Data Centers plans to build a 135,000-square-foot facility, as well as an on-site electricity substation.
The facility will house servers, or computers, that can be used for a variety of purposes, including data storage and artificial intelligence processing, according to the city of Taylor's website.
Blueprint purchased the site, located just inside the Carlos G Parker Boulevard loop in southeast Taylor, from the city's economic development corporation last year for $10 million. The company's website mentions the property is about five minutes away from Samsung's new $44 billion chip factory.
In their lawsuit, Griffin and the others aim to stop all commercial development and construction on the site, including Blueprint's data center project. They reference a land deed from 1999 that shows previous owners, the Cromwell family, granted the property to a nonprofit, the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, "to be held in trust for future use as parkland."
Griffin said the Cromwells used to allow her and her siblings to play on the land when they were kids.
"When I was a little girl, [Frank Rhea Cromwell] used to see us play, and he knew we didn't have enough room. So he told my dad, 'if something happens to me, I'm going to give this land to y'all for a park,'" Griffin said. "We did not know that man kept his word. He knew we needed something, and he was willing to give it to us."
The property changed hands a couple of times before eventually being transferred to the city of Taylor in 2004. The city said on its website that the property has been "zoned industrial" since 2005, when it updated its comprehensive plan.
When asked about the lawsuit, a city spokesperson sent the following response: "The City of Taylor is not party to any lawsuit related to Blueprint Projects Data Center. We do not have any additional information or insight."
Blueprint Data Centers did not answer any of KUT's requests for comment on the lawsuit, or for more information on its project in Taylor.
"It breaks my heart that they didn't do what they [were] supposed to have done — the city of Taylor," Griffin said. "They want to make it industrial and build this data center that can harm the community, and it was given for a park."
Griffin said she felt like the city underestimated the community's response.
"It felt like they thought we didn't have the power to fight back, so they just went ahead and done what they wanted to do," she said. "They made us feel stupid. And I felt like that for a minute, until I gathered myself and said, 'Pam, you're going to have to fight this. You don't know how you're going to fight it, but you're going to have to fight this.'"
Griffin is now asking her neighbors and other Taylor residents to show up to a court hearing on Sept. 29. There, a judge will consider the future of the lawsuit against Blueprint's data center project.
"I'm hoping that it sets a precedent as we move forward, because Taylor's growing," D'Anna said. "There's so much business coming this way, and it's only the beginning, but this is the moment where south side, specifically — but also all of Taylor — have a really good opportunity to tell their government officials and their city staff, like, 'hey, we care about the people who already live here.'"
