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Though construction of data centers in Texas has garnered plenty of opposition from residents, plans are still moving forward to bring more of these facilities to Central Texas. But just how many? And how soon? Those questions and more were part of a recent hearing held by state leaders.
Austin’s parks are a favorite amenity of many an Austinite — and the city has hundreds more acres of parkland currently unused. The costs of developing a neighborhood park. Andrea Ball, growth and development reporter for Austin Current joins us to talk about this.
Plus: Fusebox Festival returns to Austin this week in many spaces around town that aren’t normally venues for arts performances. What to keep your eyes and ears open for this week.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] The construction of data centers in Texas has garnered plenty of opposition from Texans, but plans are still moving forward to bring more of these facilities to central Texas. But just how many and how soon could they be here? Those questions and more were part of a hearing held by state leaders this month. We’re going to have more about that. And Austin’s parks are a favorite amenity of many in Austinite, and the city has hundreds more acres of parkland currently unused. The costs of developing a neighborhood park here in Austin, those stories and more coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:38] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:44] Plus, Fusebox Festival returns to Austin this week, and many spaces around town that aren’t normally venues for arts performances. What to keep your eyes and ears open for this week? That is up next, right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal, thank you for tuning in to Community Powered Public Radio KUT News, I’m your host Jerry Kikano, it is Tuesday, April 14th. One of the things Austin is known and loved for is green spaces, surely you have your favorite one about town. Well land that was purchased by the city with the intention to expand on this beloved feature is still sitting untouched. And unable to be used by much of the public. For more about this story, we’re speaking with Andrea Ball, Growth Development Reporter for Austin Current. Andrea, great to have you back on Austin Signal. Thank you for having me. So let’s first talk about the Austin Park system itself. How big is it? How many parks are in the system?
Andrea Ball [00:01:53] It has, oh gosh, what is it, about 400 parks and several hundred thousand acres of land. It’s pretty big and they maintain it and put new equipment in it and all sorts of stuff.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:05] It’s already a pretty big system as it stands how much land is how much parkland specifically is the city of Austin currently is sitting on.
Andrea Ball [00:02:14] About 300 acres over 50 neighborhood and little pocket parks, which are very small. They’re about an acre.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:23] How much taxpayer money has been spent on this to acquire this parkland?
Andrea Ball [00:02:28] So over the years, about $41 million. However, there is a lot of parkland that has been purchased and is sitting there that was the money came from fees that developer pays. So there’s a lot more money out there on land. We just don’t know how much.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:44] In your story for Austin Current, you mentioned that there are a few reasons why some of this parkland is sitting empty. Can you go over a few of those?
Andrea Ball [00:02:51] Yes. So one of the reasons is money. It takes money to develop a park. It also takes a lot of time. So first of all, most of our park money comes from bonds. And then it also some comes from developers and grants and things like that. But it’s finite. It also takes long time to, once you have the land, to get public input. It could take year. About what do you want in this park, what should it look like, how should we develop it, where should what be, that kind of thing. Then you have the permitting process, which can take a year. Then you the actual construction. And in the case of Jamestown Neighborhood Park, on top of all of that, the city is using that space for about a year for a nearby watershed project. So they’re using that as a staging area. So it’s not available for further development.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:48] You talk about Jamestown neighborhood park quite a bit in your story. What is its status right now?
Andrea Ball [00:03:55] So the city told me that the plan has been approved. Austin Parks Foundation got involved and donated through a grant the design fees and stuff like that. And now it’s planned. And now, it has to wait until the city goes through the permitting process and watershed gets done with that property. And then who knows exactly what happens after that. But, um, one of the people that I interviewed said, well, when I started this, my son wasn’t born. And when he, you know, this actually happens, maybe he’ll be four, you know, something like that.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:37] Yeah, it sounds like this person had envisioned their kids running around Jamestown Park, but it sort of seems from your story that they’re beginning to accept that that might not be a reality, correct?
Andrea Ball [00:04:47] Yeah, if you talk to the city, they’re like, it’s gonna happen. They’re not gonna be 14, 25 by the time this park, you know, is actually built. But so many people, when I was just talking about it with friends, they were like, yeah, why does it take so darn long? That park has been sitting there forever. When are they going to do something with it? And that’s like from all over the city. Not just Jamestown.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:06] What are the city’s goals for Austinites to be able to experience a park next to them?
Andrea Ball [00:05:11] So the goal is to have a park within five to 10 minutes walking. And I think 70% of the people in the city do have that, but another 30% don’t.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:23] What else have you heard from the city of Austin about the parkland that they’re sitting on and about the future plans to make some of these a reality?
Andrea Ball [00:05:31] So, of course, they’re waiting for a bond election this November where they have a certain amount of money they’re going to ask for for parks. It’s under consideration right now. And they also need to get through the planning process. I think that obviously it’s the Parks Department. They want parks. And everybody wants parks. And there’s just a lot of demand for it. And so they have to prioritize, okay, well, this one isn’t in an area where this is the most people. And it could be this, but they’ve owned some land for eight years, nine years, and there’s no immediate plans for it.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:08] So why, Andrea, why do you think that green spaces are so important to austenites?
Andrea Ball [00:06:14] So, one of the reasons that we want parks, of course, is because we want to be able to relax and play and have kids on a playground and stuff like that. But green space and trees is so deeply linked to mental and physical health. And it’s really important to have that space available for everybody and not just areas that are favored.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:36] There are lots of Austinites who would say that the park system here in Austin is one of their favorite features of the city. Is there any data to support that the city has a good park system or ratings compared to other cities in the US?
Andrea Ball [00:06:51] So the trust for public land rated us 54 out of 100 of the largest cities in terms of our park land. But yeah, people really do love it here and want more of it.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:05] All right, we have been speaking with Andrea Ball, Growth Development Reporter for Austin Current, KUT and Austin Signals partner in covering the city of Austin. Andrea, always great to talk to you.
Andrea Ball [00:07:14] Thank you for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:23] Recently, data center developers, state lawmakers, and regulators met up here in Austin for a hearing on how Texas should prepare for the coming data center boom. For more about that, we’re speaking with Moe’s Bushell, KUT’s energy and environment senior correspondent. Moe, thanks for being with us. No problem, Jerry. So this was a hearing conducted by the House Committee on State Affairs. Why were these lawmakers wanting to talk with data center folks exactly?
Mose Buchele [00:07:47] So there are tons of reasons why people want to know more about data centers. Obviously, it is an industry that is booming. We’re hearing all about artificial intelligence and how there are going to be data centers coming in all over the place. There already are a ton of new data centers that have popped up all around the state, all around country. People are worried about what that means for data centers use of water, for example, especially in Texas, a place that struggles with drought and water scarcity. People are worry about… What data centers will do for energy demand? They require a lot of electricity. Is that going to raise energy costs for everyday rate payers? They’re worried about what it will mean for just like the simple infrastructure of the grid, grid reliability. Will there be enough electricity to go around if these data centers all of a sudden just pop up everywhere needing electricity? These were the things, especially the grid-related questions, these were the thing that were discussed at this hearing.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:41] What are some of the potential effects that data centers could have on the grid, Moe’s?
Mose Buchele [00:08:45] So, you know, the question is, is the Texas grid going to be able to handle what might be a massive influx of energy demand? Typically, the Texas Grid is known as a kind of, I mean, I hate to say it, but kind of like a wild west. It’s very hands-off in terms of the way it regulates and controls interconnections. That’s to say, big businesses that wanna show up and start pulling power off the grid, or big power suppliers that wanna come up and make. More energy supply for the grid. It’s all done in a very hands-off way. But what’s happened in the last couple years is that the data center industry is announcing all these big projects, and many of them will be using as much electricity potentially as like a city. And so the grid operator ERCOT, which has traditionally been kind of like, quote unquote, Texas open for business, is suddenly needing. To to to better regulate this influx of energy demand, you know, I think we’ve heard testimony that that new energy demand might increase by about seven times what it was in 2024. What they’re seeing now is that new data centers may require seven times more energy than than new businesses required in 2024. So that is the challenge. That’s what they were talking about.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:02] So there’s this pledge, the rate payer protection pledge that President Trump hopes will ease folks mind about energy use and cost. What is this pledge and do people think it’s actually going to work?
Mose Buchele [00:10:13] Right, and this came up at the hearing. Yeah, the concern here is that as more companies, especially data centers, but big energy users come online, that demand will raise the cost of electricity. President Trump has tried to answer those concerns by essentially creating a voluntary and non-binding, quite frankly, pledge that big tech companies will sign and say, hey, our data centers are AI. Data center use will not raise the cost of electricity for rate payers. So this came up at the hearing. And there are a lot of criticisms of this. For one, it is non-binding. It’s basically just kind of a promise from these corporations. The other issue that came up with the hearing, though, is that data centers themselves are not owned or even necessarily operated by these big tech companies. Your Metas, your Googles, your Microsofts. These data centers are owned by data center… Builders, developers, operators, who then act as landlords to other large companies. And what we heard at the hearings, if you’re a landlord, you’re not going to sign on to a pledge that your tenants might not want you to. You’re in the business of trying to attract tenants and it doesn’t make sense for a data center owner operator who’s trying to rent out that capacity to commit themselves to a voluntary pledge that their corporate tenants may not be a part of.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:40] Mose, this is a two part question. Generally, what has been public reaction to data centers coming to Texas and how does that compare with what you heard from lawmakers at the hearing?
Mose Buchele [00:11:50] This was striking to me just kind of watching this hearing as it unfolded. It is, I think, safe to say that the public at many, many places is very skeptical of data centers. They are concerned about all the things that we’ve already enumerated, the costs associated, the environmental impacts, the water use. These are all questions people have. People also complain about the noise they can make. People often don’t want these facilities next door to them, especially. Uh, people are frankly also skeptical of artificial intelligence and what value it might really bring, or how many jobs it might actually ultimately remove from the economy if it continues to grow. So there are a lot of reasons people worry about data centers. What we heard at the beginning of this hearing, though, was actually a lot lawmakers kind of speaking on behalf of big business developers that they knew. A couple lawmakers in particular were asking questions about, one guy said, friends of theirs who would received charges from transmission companies that they thought were unfair. And so there did seem to be a bit of a kind of disconnect between the questions posed by state lawmakers at the hearing and what you just kind of hear in the atmosphere in this country right now. There’s skepticism, there’s concern on the part of the public and everyday rate payers. That did not come up immediately in the hearing, although I should say it did eventually come up. Those questions were asked. Uh… By politicians and and um… It’s the beginning of a process frankly it’s gonna go on for a while including into the next legislative session next year
Jerry Quijano [00:13:23] Moze, another takeaway that you had from the hearing is that, while there have been a lot of data centers announced, their future is sort of up in the air. What’s happening there?
Mose Buchele [00:13:31] This is something I think that’s important for people to realize as they read about this influx, this surge of potential data center development. A lot of these facilities are on paper. They are business propositions. And if you are someone who’s trying to promote your data center idea to raise money for your data center, you’re going to go to the local utility. And you’re gonna say, hey, I’d like to build this facility here, and it may require x megawatts of power. The second you file that paperwork with your utility, the grid operator is going to want to know about that and is, in fact, going to start planning around that, because the people that manage the electric grid, they need to assume that they have enough energy to supply. Yeah, that makes sense. Because these new, big power users, right? So it doesn’t take much to announce your intention to build a data center. And the second that’s… Done, people, you know, start worrying and operating around those assumptions. The reality is that a lot of those ideas, a lot of those propositions will probably not actually become reality. They need funding, they need equipment, they need all sorts of things. And they need, they need clients too. They need, you know, they needed corporate clients to, to use the facilities. And so part of what state leaders, state regulators are trying to do is create a system to what they’ve been calling filter out to kind of. To kind of identify what projects are real, and that they need to plan for to keep the grid stable, and all the other stuff, and what projects may be speculation.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:10] All right, we have been speaking with Mohs Bouchelle. He is KUT’s energy and environment senior correspondent. Mohs, thank you for your time. Always a pleasure, Jerry. And thank you for spending part of your Tuesday here with us. This is Austin Signal. We’ll be back after a break. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. Organizers of the Fusebox Festival say they don’t want their biennial festival to just be a plug and play event that could happen in any old city. The 2026 Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday here in Austin. And some of the performances will take place in spaces that don’t usually house arts performances. KUT’s Jennifer Stayton recently talked with Ron Berry, Fuse Box Festival co-founder and artistic director. And they talked in one of those unconventional spots on top of a parking garage roof. They started their conversation talking about how the festival has evolved over its 22-year history.
Ron Berry [00:16:08] So when we started, we had like a $5,000 budget and we grew largely through community partnerships. I think at first that was just a way that we could do some things that we couldn’t do with our $5000 budget, but it kind of quickly became this core value, this core way of working, the act of partnering and collaborating and the act sitting across the table from other community members and dreaming up projects together. So that’s how we grew. So when started. The whole festival pretty much took place in one building. Now the festival happens all over the city, and after 20 years of doing a festival annually, we have moved to a biennial festival. So the festival now happens every two years, and this April will be the first edition of our biennale festival.
Jennifer Stayton [00:16:55] And give us a little taste of what folks can expect from this year’s festival.
Ron Berry [00:17:00] We’re doing a lot of things in public spaces. We really wanted to play with like the architecture of this place. My least favorite festivals are ones that feel like they could be happening anywhere. Like I really like to experience a place when I’m experiencing a festival. And so we’re doing projects in baseball fields and basketball courts and parking garages on the sides of buildings. We’re do morning walks that sort of allow you to explore the terrain of the city. We’re also doing performances in theaters and galleries and museums and things like that as well.
Jennifer Stayton [00:17:32] Tell everybody where we are and why we’re having this conversation in this particular space.
Ron Berry [00:17:38] We are on top of the Hampton Inn Eastside parking garage on the roof, has incredible views of the city. We are partnering with them to host this really remarkable musical performance by our beloved Graham Reynolds, local composer. It’s a large scale performance of this piece of music that he wrote originally for the Eclipse, and it’s only been performed one time, but he was really interested in Are you imagining that? With a large band. We thought it’d be really cool to perform this piece on this rooftop overlooking the city.
Jennifer Stayton [00:18:15] Austin has a very vibrant art scene, a very vibrate festival scene. How do you make Fusebox sort of stand out in what is a happily crowded?
Ron Berry [00:18:27] Arts, landscape? This is a question that we return to all the time. Why are we doing a festival? For us, it’s reflected in the kinds of projects that we’re offering. This is, for many people in central Texas, their only opportunity to experience these artists and these projects. Secondly, it is really not a plug and play festival. This is really, we spend, in this case, we spent almost two years siting some of these projects and being really. Thoughtful and considerate about how they exist, how the public interacts with these works. We also, I would say, prioritize paying our artists. That’s our single biggest festival expense and that we’re a non-profit and so that’s a value as a part of our mission as an organization. We really prioritize investing in artists and paying artists.
Jennifer Stayton [00:19:17] So I want to read you something on the Fusebox website and get you to kind of comment on it. At the heart of FuseBox is a deep love of the live experience. We believe in gathering, in sitting next to strangers, in shared attention, in using our imaginations together. How these days do you, as an artist and somebody who oversees an arts organization and festival, try to get people to focus their attention when we’ve got so much? Pulling for our attention. We can carry this thing in our pocket that gives us access to all of these experiences. How do you kind of rein people in and get them focused on something like performances at Fusebugs?
Ron Berry [00:19:58] At the center of our work is a deep belief in the live event and gathering. I still believe very deeply in the power of that and being in a room with other people and sharing experiences together. It feels like, particularly since COVID, like we do so much remote work and we’re at our screens all the time. And I do think there’s real meaning and value in sharing experiences together and feeling things together. I think art is uniquely well suited for that and art does a lot of things for different people but I think one of the things for me that it does is really creates a space for us to experience and think about the world think about communities and people and ideas and to do that with other people is really fun and then you can go grab a coffee afterwards go grab her beverage afterwards and hash it out okay what did you think you know like those things are so fun for me we spend so time selecting these artists and selecting really unique. Powerful artists that you know we also were pretty convinced that when you do encounter this work that it’s very captivating. We’re drawn to artists that like once they start performing you’re like oh my gosh this thing is happening and I have no choice but to pay attention to this thing that’s in front of me. It’s an opportunity to experience things with with friends but also with strangers and I think that’s important too.
Jennifer Stayton [00:21:19] How do you balance keeping the festival intriguing, provocative with some challenging things, but also the sort of commercial reality of needing to pay artists and needing to paid bills?
Ron Berry [00:21:32] It’s a great question. I mean, first of all, I think the fact that we’re structured as a nonprofit really helps with this. Like we are not entirely or even predominantly reliant on ticket sales to cover these expenses. We do, you know, part of our budget relies on ticket, ticket sales, but it’s certainly not the largest part of budget. And so that kind of liberates us to, you to consider some other things. I think ultimately we want to like create the most interesting and meaningful artistic experiences that we can for people. I also think across all of our projects, even if it’s something that’s perhaps more broadly, generally, you know, accessible, we still think and really try to program shows that still have a spark of some kind, a sense of possibility of like, oh wow, that’s really fresh, or I’ve never really experienced something like that, even it is kind of more broadly accessible than some of our more challenging ones.
Jennifer Stayton [00:22:28] You seem pretty calm. What is it like to be the person in charge of a festival like when the festival is coming up?
Ron Berry [00:22:36] Uh sheer terror and panic underneath the cool exterior. We have done it 22 years and so there’s a lot of history and experience. Yeah there are a lot old familiar feelings of kind of anxiety and stress but also like a confidence that we we know it’s going to work. It is a lot of planning. We do everything in partnership and so the festival is assembled with like 25, 30 different partnerships and so those are all those are like relationships and so That’s not stressful, it’s actually really joyous, but it is just a lot of communication and a lot coordination. For me, a lot the joy of this work is actually just working with partners and community organizations with other artists and building this thing together. That’s fun, is you also have the support of that.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:23] That was the voice of Ron Berry, co-founder and artistic director of Fusebox Festival. He met KUT’s Jennifer Stayton on top of a parking garage roof, just one of the many unconventional venues for this year’s festival. We’re going to have more about the stories we shared with you today in the podcast show notes, and there’s more from us at KUT.org slash signal. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We’ll be back with you at the same time tomorrow. Talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
