Almost 30 years ago a farming family deeded land to the City of Taylor, Texas, on the condition the city use it for a public park. For the nominal fee of $10, the farmers granted the 87 acres to a public trust in 1999. Taylor sold it to Blueprint, a data center developer, for $10 million in 2025. Now the land that was supposed to belong to the community will become a 135,000 square foot data center.

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Griffin told 404 Media that she and her family had lived in the area since her grandmother bought land there. "Back then, Black and brown people weren't allowed to buy in the city limits of Taylor. So we had to buy on the outskirts," Griffin, who is Black, said. Griffin's father bought more land, including a vacant lot in the neighborhood for Griffin's ten brothers and sisters to play in. Behind the lot was the property of a farmer called Mr. Bland.

According to Griffin, Mr. Bland was friendly and would sometimes talk with her father. "We used to play baseball back there and our balls used to go on his property and he'd see us play and he'd throw the balls back to us and wave at us when he was on his tractor. One day he was talking to my dad [...] and he said, 'I see the kids don't really have nowhere to play.' He said, 'I'm thinking about giving this land for parkland because these kids need somewhere to play.'"

According to court records and real estate documents obtained by Griffin and reviewed by 404 Media, Bland and his family made good on that promise in 1999, granting the land to a public trust for $10 on the condition it be used as a park. That condition was included in the deed itself. Over the years, the land changed hands several times until 2025 when the City of Taylor sold it to data center developers for $10 million.

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