"They didn't ask us for a thing. They just told us that we're doing it," Angelina County Judge Keith Wright told KLTV in June.
He was describing how he learned that a data center was coming to a shuttered paper mill on Highway 103 East, just outside Lufkin city limits. He wasn't being asked for a permit. He wasn't being asked for anything. Under Texas law, counties have no zoning authority over unincorporated land, so a company doesn't need county approval to build there. It only needs a seller.
That project, proposed by Denver-based AmpZ Champion Data Center Holdings, has since become the loudest land-use story Angelina County has had in years. Packed commissioners court meetings. A rally outside a city council session. Coverage from the Texas Tribune, multiple Fox affiliates, and the local East Texas TV stations. If you've bought a home near Hudson or Lufkin in the past few months, you've probably heard about it.
What you may not have heard is that a second data center, on the other end of the same highway, has already broken ground.
Two Sites, One Highway, Opposite Speeds
As KLTV reported, the two projects sit on the same road, headed opposite directions out of Lufkin, and they've moved at opposite speeds all year.
| AmpZ (Highway 103 East) | HyperDataGrid (Highway 103 West) | |
|---|---|---|
| Former site | Southland Paper Mill, which employed close to 600 people before closing in 2004 | Northern Chip Mill, a former 40-acre timber facility |
| Reported footprint | More than 1,000 acres, described as a possible $1 billion capital investment | Not publicly sized; county officials describe it as a "small data center" |
| Construction as of July 2026 | None. No ground activity | Underway. Land clearing had already begun |
| Power | Still waiting on an agreement with Oncor | Agreement with Oncor already in place, using existing infrastructure on site |
| Water | A proposed closed-loop system, estimated by city officials at 500 gallons per day | Drawing from water wells that already exist on the property |
| County's available tool | A tax abatement under Chapter 312 of the Texas Tax Code | A Road Use Agreement, since the site fronts a county road |
| Public visibility | The subject of rallies, a barred public comment attempt at a city council meeting, and statewide coverage | Almost no local coverage until construction was already visible from the road |
AmpZ submitted a preliminary tax abatement application earlier this year. Commissioners sent it back asking for more detail, and as of July, Judge Wright said he'd had no further communication from the company. Meanwhile, on the west side of the highway, HyperDataGrid has secured its water and power and started moving dirt without a single commissioners court item on it.
Why the Quiet One Is Winning
The gap isn't about which company has more money or a better plan. It's about what each site needed permission for.
AmpZ's project depends on things it doesn't fully control yet: a power agreement with Oncor that hasn't closed, and a tax abatement it's asking the county to negotiate. Every one of those steps creates a moment where the public, the press, and the commissioners court can weigh in, and they have.
HyperDataGrid's site came with water wells already in place and enough existing infrastructure that Judge Wright described the Oncor arrangement as using "previous infrastructure on the site," as KETK reported. There was no abatement application to review, no public hearing trigger, nothing for a reporter to cover until equipment showed up. A KLTV story on the project quoted the phrase "103 West is kind of out of sight, out of mind."
For anyone evaluating property near either highway, the lesson isn't which project is bigger. It's that visibility and progress aren't the same thing, and a project can be well past the point of no return before most residents know its name.
Tools the County Has
Texas counties don't have zoning power over unincorporated land, and Judge Wright has said the state legislature did that on purpose. "They don't trust us," he told the Texas Tribune in June. One tool a county does have is the tax abatement process under Chapter 312 of the state tax code, and it only applies if a company chooses to ask for one. Nothing requires it.
That's why the county has tried to load as much as it can into any abatement it does negotiate. Conditions officials have said they want written into an AmpZ agreement include noise limits at the property line, generator testing restricted to daytime hours and never on Sundays or holidays, a 100-foot buffer from property lines and roads, dark-sky-compliant lighting, a public project website, annual reporting on energy and noise, local hiring commitments, and separate annual payments toward the county's volunteer fire department association and its road and bridge budget. Wright has also acknowledged that wastewater from data center cooling systems can carry PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals for which there's currently no widely available treatment method, a detail that has nothing to do with an abatement and everything to do with why residents keep asking about it.
None of that applies automatically to HyperDataGrid. Since its site fronts a county road rather than requiring a tax incentive, the county's only real point of leverage there is a Road Use Agreement, a narrower tool aimed at protecting roads and recovering fees rather than setting noise or lighting standards.
By late August, the arrangements had gotten complicated enough that Angelina County hired an outside law firm, Allison, Bass and Magee, for the first time on this kind of deal. Judge Wright called it the most complicated agreement the county has ever handled.
What This Means If You're Looking at Land Near Hudson
None of this means a parcel near Highway 103 is a bad buy. It means the due diligence looks different than it would for a typical rural lot, and a few questions are worth asking before you tour anything nearby.
- Is the parcel inside a city's limits or in unincorporated county land? Lufkin's control over its own water wells is exactly why a separate industrial site inside city limits, tied to a proposed biomass facility purchase, carries more oversight than a comparable site in the county. City limits come with permitting leverage that unincorporated land does not.
- Who supplies water to the industrial site nearest the property you're considering, and is that source shared with residential wells in the area? A site drawing from its own on-property wells is a different situation than one negotiating access to a municipal supply.
- Has a tax abatement application actually been filed for a specific project, or is the coverage you've read based on a proposal that hasn't reached that stage? An abatement filing is the one moment conditions get attached in writing. Before that, there's nothing to hold anyone to.
- Has ground actually been broken? Media attention and construction activity have tracked in opposite directions on Highway 103 this year, and asking directly, or checking the county road department, tells you more than a headline count.
A Couple of Questions Worth Asking Before You Tour Anything Near 103
Could either project still be stopped? Not by the county. Judge Wright has said repeatedly that commissioners have no authority to issue a moratorium or block development on unincorporated land. The county's only paths are financial, through a negotiated abatement, or logistical, through a road agreement. Residents pushing for more control have been directed toward the state legislature rather than the courthouse.
Does it matter whether a home sits inside Hudson's city limits versus the surrounding county? Based on how this has played out elsewhere in Angelina County, yes. A city that controls its own water infrastructure has a seat at the table that unincorporated land simply doesn't.
Will this affect the water supply to homes near either site? City officials have said the AmpZ closed-loop system is expected to draw around 500 gallons a day and shouldn't affect residential supply, but that figure applies to one proposed project, not the county as a whole, and it hasn't been independently verified against the second site's on-property wells.
Highway 103 is going to look different in a year, on both ends. Anyone touring acreage or a home near Hudson right now is buying into a corridor mid-transition, and the paperwork that matters most may never make it into a listing description.
If you're weighing a property near Highway 103, or anywhere else in Angelina County where a neighboring parcel's future use isn't settled yet, Platinum Properties and Ranches can walk the specific site history and jurisdiction with you before you write an offer.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
