Data Center Construction in Midwest City, Oklahoma

Forty acres of utility-owned industrial ground that the state has already recognized as ready for development is the kind of starting point a data center builder wants. Soldier Creek Industrial Park in Midwest City is owned by the city's utilities authority, was developed with a $1 million federal Economic Development Administration grant plus a $2 million city contribution, and was recognized as Site Ready by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce in a December 2016 article that counted it among 19 light industrial parks with that status. For an operator that needs a small to mid-size mission-critical building near Tinker Air Force Base, those are useful credentials.

We build the shells, slabs, electrical yards and cooling pads such a site calls for, and we take the park's paper credentials as a starting point, not a substitute for our own diligence on soils, utility capacity and drainage.

Tinker Air Force Base forms Midwest City's southern border, and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber describes a 5,000-acre military industrial complex next to the city. A jet engine remanufacturer committed in May 2022 to buy 24 acres in Soldier Creek, with planned investment of up to $50 million and up to 270 jobs. That is the kind of occupant whose test cells, engineering networks and records systems generate steady computing demand.

It also means a data center in Midwest City will be shaped by what happens at the base. Height limits, lighting, security expectations and secure-supply-chain requirements can all apply, and our government and defense experience helps us read them. If you are comparing the base area as a whole, the page for the Will Rogers Airport and Tinker area covers the airfield side.

On a prepared industrial park the earthwork is usually cleaner than on raw ground, but a data center asks more of it. We strip and stockpile topsoil, proof-roll the building pad, and place engineered fill in lifts with density testing at every step. A mission-critical slab needs a stable subgrade because it will carry heavy racks, battery strings and floor-mounted equipment, and settlement of even a fraction of an inch can affect rack alignment and containment.

We manage the slabs and underground concrete, including duct bank encasement and equipment pads. We also manage duct banks and service entrances from trench to backfill, which matters on a park where the utility already has conduit stubbed to the edge of the lot.

A park with roads, water and sewer in place saves real money in site development, but it does not save on the items that dominate a data center budget: electrical distribution, cooling plant, fire suppression and security. We keep those separate in the estimate so the owner can see how much of the total belongs to the site and how much to the building systems.

Land cost, utility upgrades and the length of the service extension to the nearest feeder tend to decide whether a park parcel outperforms a cheaper raw parcel. We run that comparison for clients using the same scope on both sites, and we say plainly when the cheaper ground ends up costing more.

Interstate 40 passes through Midwest City and Del City on the Tinker Diagonal, which provides access to the base, and the Town Center Plaza shopping area faces both the interstate and Tinker. That means site plans near the diagonal draw attention from the city, the state transportation department and, in some cases, base planners. We prepare traffic and drainage submittals early and walk the city through haul routes before the first load arrives.

Code questions are the usual ones: which edition governs the permit date, what local amendments apply and who reviews the electrical scope. We handle them in permitting and utility interconnection work, starting with a written edition table and a review calendar.

The May 8, 2003 F4 tornado crossed Tinker, crossed I-40 into southeast Midwest City and left heavily damaged houses and downed power lines. Anyone building critical infrastructure here knows power lines and storms interact. We route primary electrical feeds underground where practical, and we plan generator capacity and fuel for extended outages as well as short ones.

On site, we run the same storm protocols we use elsewhere in the metro, with defined shelters, weather monitoring and post-storm inspections. Neighboring jobs in Del City and Moore follow the same principles, so our superintendents can move between them when needed.

A park that carries a readiness label still needs its own diligence. In preconstruction we ask the utilities authority for the available electrical capacity and the date any upgrade could be energized, ask for the as-built storm and sanitary drawings, and order a geotechnical report for the exact pad. We also request the covenants, setback lines and any height limit that comes from the neighboring airfield, because those documents decide the building footprint before any architect draws it.

From there we build a one-page decision sheet for the owner: capacity available, capacity needed, time to energize, drainage solution, foundation type and the first-order cost of each. That sheet makes it easy to compare the park against another parcel, or against the same park with a different lot configuration. Our preconstruction and estimating team updates it as drawings progress, so the number the owner approves early is the number that gets tracked through construction.

With utilities, the lesson from similar jobs is to ask the second question. A will-serve letter tells you a feeder exists. It does not tell you whether the breaker, the transformer and the conductor at the end of it can carry a cooling plant that starts at once after an outage.

Send us the park, the lot and your target load. We will compare the site against your options and give you a build plan with the permit and utility questions marked.

What does Site Ready certification mean for a data center owner?

It indicates that the Oklahoma Department of Commerce reviewed the park for items such as utilities, zoning and environmental readiness at the time of recognition, according to a December 2016 article. It is a helpful starting point, but we still verify current power capacity, soils and drainage for your load.

Is land near Tinker Air Force Base restricted?

Parcels near the base can have height, lighting and security considerations. We check the airfield and base requirements during site selection so the building, cranes and rooftop equipment fit.

How big can a data center be at Soldier Creek?

The park covers 40 acres, so the practical answer depends on how much of it a single parcel includes and on utility capacity. It suits small to mid-size mission-critical buildings and edge or enterprise facilities better than a hyperscale campus.

Does the 2003 tornado history affect design?

It affects the planning for power, since downed lines were a result of that storm. We design redundant feeds, on-site generation and fuel storage to the owner's required runtime, and we protect the building envelope to the wind criteria the engineer sets.