‘Growing demand.’ Newest Tri-Cities data center proposal is third in past year
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- Trammell Crow studies feasibility to build a data center in West Richland.
- West Richland mayor says there’s a 500-acre deal at former Lewis & Clark ranch.
- Lewis & Clark Ranch spans 7,600 acres and covers roughly half the city.
West Richland is the latest Mid-Columbia community being targeted for a data center.
Trammell Crow Co., a global real estate firm with a data center development arm, confirmed it is scrutinizing a site at the Lewis & Clark Ranch, the sprawling undeveloped section of the city being eyed for urban development.
“Trammell Crow Company is studying the feasibility to develop a portion of the Lewis & Clark land. Once our development plans are finalized, we will engage with the city of West Richland and the local community,” it told the Tri-City Herald.
West Richland Mayor Brent Gerry disclosed the potential data center during a recent Port of Benton Commission meeting.
The mayor who leaves office in December, said Trammell Crow had a deal for 500 acres, potentially growing to 1,000, with Frank Tiegs LLC.
The company owns the 7,600-acre Lewis & Clark Ranch, which comprises about half the city.
Tri-Cities data center proposals
It is the third data center proposal in the Mid-Columbia in the past year.
The first was a complex of 16 data centers envisioned for Wallula Gap Business Park east of Pasco.
The second is Atlas Agro North America’s proposal to site a data center next to its future fertilizer plant in Richland’s Northwest Advanced Clean Energy Park.
Any of the three would be the first data center in or near the Tri-Cities.
Data centers are more common on the Oregon side of the state border because of Oregon’s robust tax incentives and because local officials haven’t recruited the energy-intensive industry.
Amazon Web Services is building a major center in development near Boardman, about 50 miles south of Kennewick, and has another in review by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
The Mid-Columbia is attracting attention amid a nationwide data center boom, fueled by AI and exploding demand for computing capabilities. Data centers are typically massive buildings packed with computing equipment.
They cost millions if not billions to build, consume vast amounts of water and power, and generally do not employ significant numbers of people beyond the construction phase.
In the Mid-Columbia, the wave of data center deals is viewed as an economic win because of the dollars involved.
But important questions about supplying them with water and electricity remain unanswered.
West Richland proposal
Mayor Gerry’s comments came during a larger conversation about bringing power to the Northwest Advanced Clean Energy Park to power energy-intensive industries there.
The park is a joint initiative of the port and the city of Richland to leverage land it acquired from the Department of Energy to attract industry in a bid to reduce the region’s reliance on federal spending on the nuclear site cleanup.
Gerry declined to answer follow-up questions about the project, and released a statement via the city that there would be no further discussion about the data center.
Benton Rural Electric Association, the electric utility to the area, confirmed to the Herald it has an agreement in place with “the company,” though it did not identify Trammell Crow by name.
“Benton REA is in the early stages of due diligence with a prospective data center in our service area to evaluate feasible options for electric service. We have a cost-recovery agreement in place requiring the company to reimburse Benton REA for the planning, engineering, and study work related to this evaluation. No decisions have been made at this point,” it said in a statement attributed to Troy Berglund, deputy general manager and vice president of member experience.
It declined to release the agreement, noting that as a cooperative, it is not subject to the Washington Public Records Act.
Lewis & Clark Ranch is a roughly 7,600-acre ranch that was annexed into the city of West Richland in 1981.
Pasco-based Frank Tiegs LLC did not respond to requests for comment or to elaborate on how a data center fits into its past discussions to convert that agricultural property into an urban center for living, shopping, working, light industry and commerce.
Since 2022, the company and the city have been creating a master plan to guide urban development there.
In July, West Richland released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, a key step as it moves to create zoning and other guidelines to govern future development.
The 1,073-page document lays out a bold vision for the city’s future, but only indirectly mentions a possible data center. It hints at the subject, noting briefly that there’s “growing demand in Eastern Washington for data centers.”
Go to westrichland.org for more on the Lewis & Clark project.
Richland and Wallula Gap
The other proposed data centers are at Wallula Gap and in Richland.
Wallula Gap: Advance Phase LLC, the alias for a U.S.-based tech company among the 30 largest companies by revenue on the Fortune 500 list, cut a deal with the Port of Walla Walla in November 2024 to buy 500 acres in western Walla Walla County for a cluster of data centers.
The project was valued at nearly $5 billion at the time. The land deal alone will be worth $32.5 million when it closes.
The proposal includes 16 data centers built in four phases off Highway 12 in Wallula Gap, where it would be neighbors with Packaging Corporation of America, Tyson and the Rockwool insulation plant now under construction.
The port would provide water for drinking and bathroom purposes, but not for industrial purposes. “Advance” would have to secure both the water and power it would need.
The data center campus would employ 380 and support 400 more “indirect” jobs.
Richland: The city of Richland is considering an agreement to sell 275 acres on Horn Rapids Road to Atlas Agro North America for a $500 million data center.
The Swiss company is better known for its plan to build a $1.5 billion “low-carbon” fertilizer plant on land next to the data center site.
The data center plan would help it offset the cost of the fertilizer plant, city officials said.
The city’s economic development committee recommended the city council approve Atlas Agro’s request for an option to buy the land for $24 million. The city council will consider the proposal when it meets in early December.
Atlas Agro will have to supply its own electricity, which would be transmitted to north Richland via a new Bonneville Power Administration connection near Horn Rapids and Stevens Drive.
The two Atlas Agro projects would not affect existing customers of Richland’s city-owned electric utility because city policy requires large customers to pay the cost of serving them, city officials say.
The city stands to benefit from having a large customer to share in the administrative costs and to pay surcharges on power transmitted through its system.
Questions linger
Growing demand for generative artificial intelligence (AI) is behind the boom in data center construction and poses profound implications for water and energy consumption and for carbon emissions, according to a peer-reviewed analysis developed by researchers at Cornell University and published Nov. 10 in Nature Sustainability.
A Washington-specific review of the economic and environmental impacts of data centers is being readied for a Dec. 1 release by the state Department of Revenue.
Gov. Bob Ferguson ordered the review after a Seattle Times/ProPublic report demonstrated that Washington’s tax breaks for data centers conflict with Washington’s climate goals.
The data center workgroup is charged with recommending policies and actions that address energy use and other impacts of data centers. The report could inform new bills considered by the 2026 Legislature, which starts Jan. 12.
This story was originally published November 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Growing demand.’ Newest Tri-Cities data center proposal is third in past year."