- The claim that a Texas city paid a family farm $10 in exchange for land meant to be used for a park and then sold the land to a data center developer for $10 million is still under investigation.
- Deeds from Williamson County show that four members of the Cromwell family sold a plot of land to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation for $10 “to be held in the trust for future use as parkland” in July 1999. The land changed hands four more times until NCP Travis TPP Project LCC, a data center developer, bought it from the Taylor Economic Development Corp. for $10 million in 2025.
- Blueprint Data Centers, whose parent company is reportedly NCP Travis TPP Project LCC, got approval in 2024 from the city of Taylor to build a 135,000-square-foot data center on the land that the Cromwell family originally sold for parkland.
- The requirement that the land should be parkland featured only in the Cromwells’ deed, not subsequent ones. At the time of this writing, an appeals court in Texas was considering a group of Taylor residents’ lawsuit to stop the construction of the data center based on the parkland clause.
- Another appeals court was considering a request from campaigners to force the city of Taylor to let the public vote to change its zoning laws and prohibit data centers in existing zones.
- Snopes will update this report if additional information surfaces. We have contacted Blueprint Data Centers to ask about the status of the project in Taylor and are waiting for responses.
In August 2026, a claim circulated online that a Texas city paid a family farm $10 in exchange for land meant to be used for a park and later sold the land to a data center developer for $10 million.
One X user, whose post about the claim had more than 2 million views at the time of this writing, wrote (archived):
A Texas city allegedly paid a family farm $10 in exchange for land meant to be used for a park and then sold the land to a data center developer for $10 million.The family is now suing for the deed to be honored and the park to be built.
Claims about the alleged dispute between a city in Texas and its residents over a planned data center also circulated on Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived). Snopes readers contacted us, asking about the claim.
According to a deed from the Williamson County Clerk’s Office, four members of the Cromwell family granted a plot of land to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation in exchange for $10, with the stipulation that the land was “to be held in the trust for future use as parkland,” in July 1999.
Since then, the land changed hands multiple times until, in 2025, the Taylor Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit corporation funded by the city of Taylor, sold it to NCP Travis TPP Project LCC, a data center developer, for $10 million, according to the city’s website.
Along the way, the requirement for the land to be used as a park disappeared from the deeds.
At the time of this writing, a Texas appeals court was considering whether a lower court was correct to dismiss a complaint that argued that the Cromwell family’s original deed requirement — that the land they sold for $10 should be used as parkland — still applied in 2026. Due to the fact that the court had not yet ruled on the appeal, we leave this claim unrated.
The obituaries of Bonnibel Cromwell and her husband, Frank Cromwell Jr., who with their two sons sold the land in 1999, suggested they did not live in Taylor at that time. However, it appeared likely that Bonnibel Cromwell had inherited all or part of a family farm her grandfather, Howard Bland Sr., established in 1878. According to a historical marker located a little more than a mile from the planned data center site, Bland’s farm stayed in the same family for at least 100 years, meaning until at least 1978, by which point Bonnibel Cromwell’s father, Howard Bland Jr., had died. Bonnibel Cromwell was an only child, according to a Find a Grave page for her father.
Snopes contacted Blueprint Data Centers, the company that sought to build the data center in Taylor — about 25 miles northeast of Austin — for comment on the ongoing case against its parent company, NCP Travis TPP Project LCC, and for a status update on the project and await a reply.
Tracking the deeds
According to the city of Taylor and documents from the Williamson County Clerk’s Office, the plot of land that NCP Travis TPP Project acquired for Blueprint Data Centers to build on in 2025 had been sold five times.
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On July 7, 1999, Bonnibel Cromwell and three other members of her family sold the land to the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation for $10. The deed documenting the sale said the land should be “held in the trust for future use as parkland.”
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On October 7, 2003, the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation sold the land to the Williamson County Park Foundation. The deed documenting the sale said the land was to be “held in trust for Williamson County, Texas,” but did not mention a further purpose.
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On Nov. 20, 2003, the Williamson County Park Foundation sold the land to the city of Taylor for $10 without any use restrictions listed in the deed.
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On October 23, 2008, the city of Taylor sold the land to the Taylor Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit corporation funded by the city of Taylor, for $15,000.
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On April 11, 2025, the Taylor Economic Development Corp. sold the land to NCP Travis TPP Project LCC. The deed documenting the sale did not show the sale amount, though the city of Taylor said on its website the Taylor Economic Development Corp. sold the land for $10 million.
Residents sue Taylor to uphold 1999 deed
In July 2025, a group of Taylor residents sued (archived) NCP Travis TPP Project LCC, reportedly the parent company of Blueprint Data Centers, which would build the data center in Taylor on the land from the Cromwell family’s 1999 deed, to stop the construction.
Pamela Griffin, one of the plaintiffs named on that lawsuit, reportedly told 404 Media that, in addition to concerns that a data center would affect property prices, she was worried about the precedent that ignoring the “for future use as parkland” clause in the Cromwell family’s original 1999 deed would set.
Griffin reportedly said that, aside from the deed, she remembered a farmer called “Mr. Bland” telling her father that he was considering giving the land in question “for parkland” to establish a place for local children to play, a promise that appeared to have been upheld in the 1999 deed.
It was not clear which “Mr. Bland” Griffin referred to, or his exact relationship to the Cromwells. Bonnibel Cromwell, one of the grantors listed on the 1999 deed, was the granddaughter of Howard Bland Sr. and the daughter of Howard Bland Jr., both of whom were ranchers in the Taylor area. The former had been instrumental in shaping the early development of Taylor, according to his March 10, 1933, obituary in the Taylor Daily Press, a newspaper he founded. The Cromwells also had a son named Howard Bland Cromwell, who appeared to have gone by the name “Bland,” according to his father’s obituary.
Judge Ryan Larson of the 395th state District Court dismissed Griffin’s case in October 2025, finding that she and the group of residents who sued had no standing to enforce the 1999 deed. The group of plaintiffs appealed. At the time of this writing, Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals was considering the appeal.
Campaigners call for vote on data center zoning
Meanwhile, campaigners against data centers in Taylor submitted a petition to the City Council at the end of June 2026 to ask it to allow citizens to vote on prohibiting data centers in existing zoning districts and creating a new zoning classification specifically for digital infrastructure.
The city had previously said on its website that it could not refuse data centers to be built in Taylor if they fit into the zoning of the land that developers wanted to build on. According to the city, the land that NCP Travis TPP Project LCC bought in 2025 was zoned as an “employment center” in 2023, which, it said, meant, “anything that is not downtown commercial or housing.”
The City Council was due to discuss the petition at a meeting on July 9. On July 10, City Manager Brian LaBorde issued an apology (archived) after the city’s Facebook page shared its decision (archived) that it would “take no action on the petition” and would not place the measure on a ballot shortly after the start of the July 9 meeting before any public discussion.
The City Council said in the July 9 decision that it could not take action on the petition because “state law does not allow a city to enact or change its zoning by popular vote.”
In response to the council’s decision, Griffin and other campaigners filed a petition for a writ of mandamus from Texas’ 3rd Court of Appeals, asking it to order the City Council to put their suggested zoning measure to a public vote.
Higher courts can issue a writ of mandamus to order a lower government official to “properly fulfill their official duties or correct an abuse of discretion,” according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. Plaintiffs generally seek a writ of mandamus if they think a lower official is not following the law.
The campaigners’ appeal had not been assigned to a judge at the time of this writing.
In sum …
At the time of this writing, two appeals courts in Texas were assessing complaints related to Blueprint Data Center’s proposed data center in Taylor.
The 15th Court of Appeals was considering whether to overturn a decision by a lower court to dismiss a case that argued that a 1999 deed said that the land the city of Taylor had sold to a developer who wished to build a data center was actually required to be a park.
The 3rd Court of Appeals was considering whether to order Taylor officials to carry out a public vote on whether the city should prohibit data centers in existing zoning districts and create a new zoning classification specifically for digital infrastructure.
The outcome of both appeals were unclear at the time of this writing. So was the status of construction on the data center. The city of Taylor approved the plan for the data center on Aug. 8, 2024, but it was unclear whether, in the face of public opposition, Blueprint Data Centers ever broke ground on the site. Google Maps imagery from 2026 did not show any visible signs of major construction at the site.
On its website, the city of Taylor said it expected “as much as $30 million in total additional revenue” from the planned data center in the next 10 years, which it said it would use to “reduce property taxes and invest in our streets, sidewalks, parks, and other services.”
For further reading, Snopes has previously investigated a series of claims about data centers.
