Conceptual aerial rendering of a Thunderbird data center campus in the Enid corridor.
Four campuses. Two private power plants. A city‑owned utility backbone — engineered as a self‑contained island so it never draws on the grid, the water, or the taxes Enid families rely on. Built to strengthen Vance Air Force Base, fund Enid’s schools, city services, and infrastructure for a generation, and set a new standard for how a project like this treats the place it calls home.
You shouldn’t have to read a whole website to know whether this is good for Enid. So here is the whole project on one screen — what your family gains, how you’re protected, and how it fits here.
Good careers that stay in town, plus 4,000+ construction jobs during the build. New revenue for all nine school districts, city services, and infrastructure — and $0 added to your electric, water, or tax bills.
Hardened backup power and fiber are designed into the corridor for Vance — reinforcing the long-term case for the base, the 2,500 families, and the local economy it anchors.
Buildings full of computers that run everyday AI, cloud, and banking — paired with private power to run them, so the grid Enid families rely on is never touched.
Homeowner buyouts, noise limits, water protections, and the city’s revenue are all embedded in the zoning — so they hold even if the project ever changes hands.
Natural gas, a drought-resilient water pipeline, transmission, and a path to national fiber all sit within a few miles — so it’s built without straining the town.
About 1,735 acres and 2.75 GW of computing, powered by 3.3 GW of on-site generation, built in deliberate stages over roughly seven years — so Enid can meet surging demand on its own terms.
Figures reflect the project as currently proposed and designed. Details are subject to public review and final approval by the City of Enid and its partners.
A data center is a building full of computers that run around the clock — they power AI, cloud services, banking, streaming, medical systems, and an increasing share of the digital infrastructure people use every day. Demand for these facilities is accelerating, and communities across America are having this exact conversation right now. Enid is one of them. Project Thunderbird is our attempt to do it right — to set a new standard for how a data center project partners with its host community.
Two natural gas power plants, built and paid for privately — not by taxpayers. Thunderbird is designed to run fully behind the meter as a self‑contained island: it generates all of its own electricity and never pulls from the grid that serves Enid homes and businesses — so it can’t cause shortages, outages, or higher rates.
No potable water for cooling or power. No open-loop evaporative cooling towers. Thunderbird will be the first anchor customer on the Kaw Lake Pipeline. Every gallon delivered carries a surcharge funding watershed restoration and water infrastructure — independently verified and publicly reported every year.
Designed to provide hardened backup power and fiber to Vance Air Force Base. As AI compute becomes critical national infrastructure, the corridor positions Enid to play a strategic role in the future of defense — strengthening the case for Vance and the families it supports.
New public revenue at a scale that could put all nine Garfield County school districts among the better-funded in Oklahoma — and strengthen city services and infrastructure alongside them. Over the life of the project, that funding is projected in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
±1,100 permanent, high-paying technical roles once the corridor is running — plant operators, electricians, network and security techs, and skilled trades — plus 4,000+ prevailing-wage construction jobs over the 5–7 year build. Local hiring preference is written into the land’s entitlements.
Secure, sovereign compute on American soil is fast becoming front-line infrastructure for national defense and intelligence. By hosting it at home, Enid steps onto that map — a resilient, hardened platform that strengthens Vance AFB and positions our community at the leading edge of the next generation of national security.
The Enid corridor — four campuses linked by the Patriot Utility District's 345 kV ring and a central water/fiber backbone, anchored to the Kaw Lake Pipeline, with a hardened power extension to Vance AFB. Illustrative layout.
The right question isn't "Are data centers good or bad for Enid?" Data centers are tools — their impact depends entirely on how they're structured. The real question is: under what conditions would a project actually benefit our city without damaging the community long-term? Here is how Thunderbird was designed, concern by concern, to answer that question.
When data centers plug into the local grid, communities can end up competing for the same power supply. In some markets, rapid growth in demand has contributed to rate pressure on residents and businesses.
Thunderbird makes all of its own electricity on-site, behind the meter, from two private natural-gas plants. It never draws on the grid that serves Enid homes and businesses — so it can’t create the shortages, outages, or rate increases that grid‑connected data centers can.
Evaporative cooling is common in the industry, and water consumption can become a concern — particularly in regions where supply is limited or where residents worry about long-term availability.
Thunderbird will not use potable water to cool its computers or run its power plants — those draw only raw Kaw Lake water, in a closed loop. The only city water it uses is for ordinary building needs like restrooms and drinking fountains. As the Kaw Lake Pipeline's first anchor customer, it helps pay down the $330 million bond Enid taxpayers are carrying. And every gallon delivered carries a Water Restoration Fund surcharge for watershed restoration, agricultural water efficiency, and community water infrastructure across North-Central Oklahoma — independently audited and published every year.
Homeowners near large-scale development can face construction disruption, noise, and visual impact. Without a clear mitigation plan, these concerns erode community trust and can stall projects entirely.
Homeowners nearest the campuses will be offered voluntary buyouts at 150% of their home’s fair market value. Those slightly farther out are offered 125%. Anyone who chooses to stay receives a $15,000 improvement grant. All administered by ERDA — a trusted local nonprofit — not the developer.
Large-scale projects often involve significant tax incentives. When those aren’t structured carefully, local schools, services, and infrastructure can absorb the impact without seeing proportional benefit.
New public revenue at a scale that could put all nine Garfield County school districts among the better-funded in Oklahoma — with more to strengthen city services and infrastructure. Better-paid teachers. Better facilities. A trust fund designed to backfill when the state cuts. Over the life of the project, that funding is projected in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Data centers can consume a community’s land, power, and water — and lean on public incentives — while the biggest returns flow to an outside company. Residents worry they’ll carry the costs and see little of the benefit.
Thunderbird makes its own power and cools its computers with raw lake water, not the city’s drinking supply, so it takes almost nothing from Enid’s grid, water, or tax base. What it gives back is substantial and built to stay: a generation of funding for schools, city services, and infrastructure; a Municipal Trust; the Kaw Lake bond paydown; ±1,100 permanent jobs; and a hardened backbone for Vance.
Strip away the engineering and a project like this comes down to one question: what does the community get, and can it count on it? Here is where the value goes. Every item below is funded by the project itself — and structured to last.
Concession fees and project revenue — paid by the data center and its tenants, not by Enid taxpayers — flow into commitments that stay with the community.
Projected public revenue over the life of the project — enough to put all nine Garfield County districts among Oklahoma’s better-funded and strengthen city services and infrastructure, with a trust fund to backfill when the state cuts.
Two percent of all proceeds from the sale of the corridor is endowed in a Municipal Trust designed to support Enid for the long term.
As the Kaw Lake Pipeline’s first anchor customer, Thunderbird helps repay the $330 million bond Enid taxpayers are already carrying.
A surcharge on every gallon delivered funds watershed restoration, agricultural water efficiency, and community water infrastructure — independently audited and published every year.
Backup power and fiber designed into the corridor for Vance — strengthening the long-term case for the base and the 2,500 families it supports.
±1,100 high-paying permanent roles once the corridor is running, plus 4,000+ prevailing-wage construction jobs over the 5–7 year build — with local-hire preference written into the entitlements.
Every commitment above is embedded in the zoning entitlements through a Special Planned Unit Development, so it runs with the land and survives any change of ownership. Figures reflect the project as currently proposed.
Most Oklahoma towns wrestling with whether a data center is right for them are caught in a trap: missing even one key infrastructure component can come at a significant cost to residents. Enid is the rare exception. All three pillars below already exist within the same few miles, and within reach of all four campus sites. Here is what sets Enid apart, pillar by pillar:
Everyone in Enid understands what Vance means. It’s not just 2,500 jobs. It’s the families who met at the base, the kids who grew up on base housing, the businesses that exist because Vance exists.
The Patriot Utility District is designed to do more than power data centers. It is being structured to provide hardened, secure backup power and fiber directly to Vance Air Force Base.
It also positions Enid for what comes next. The Department of Defense increasingly treats AI compute, sovereign data, and energy resilience as strategic assets — and many analysts believe that data centers will become the next generation of critical national infrastructure, as essential to defense as shipyards and air bases were in earlier eras. A corridor designed for hyperscale compute, hardened power, and a 24/7 USAF training mission gives Enid a credible role in that future.
A base with the option to connect to private power and fiber infrastructure of this scale — with capacity to support workloads relevant to national defense — would have a stronger long-term case to keep and expand, without costing the Department of Defense a dollar. That matters to the 2,500 families tied directly to Vance and to a community of 50,000+ Enid residents.
Infrastructure that serves a federal military installation can carry legal protections that commercial-only projects do not. Future moratoriums, taxes, and regulatory changes would face this argument.
A designed defense connection would open a pathway toward FedRAMP and DoD certification — giving a future operator a credible route into federal cloud and sovereign AI workloads, an advantage few competing sites can offer.
Few data center projects in America have been designed from the ground up around the resilience of a nearby military installation. In Enid, the corridor and the Air Force base are designed to reinforce each other — and that gives Vance, and the families and city that depend on it, a stronger long-term footing.
Thunderbird isn’t just making promises — it’s building a legal and financial architecture that keeps Enid at the table with permanent influence on this project’s impact.
The City of Enid will own the power transmission backbone, the water delivery infrastructure, and the dark fiber network connecting all four campuses. Revenue bonds backed by concession fees charged to the data center — not taxpayer money — will finance the system. As long as the wires carry power, the pipes carry water, and the fiber carries data to the data center, power plants, and Vance, the City collects significant revenue. If the data center changes hands, the infrastructure stays. The concession fees stay. The City’s revenue stays.
Every financial commitment will be embedded in the land's zoning entitlements. Concession fee payments, the infrastructure, water supply commitments, community betterment contributions, and building restrictions all run with the land and transfer with any sale. The community gets durable commitments; future operators get the regulatory certainty they need to invest.
Change is hard, especially when it is near to your neighborhood. In most data center projects, nearby homeowners are left to deal with the consequences. We want to flip that. Whether you choose to stay or leave, we want to support you.
This program will be run by ERDA — Enid’s own economic development nonprofit — not by the developer. An independent appraiser sets your home’s value based on what it was worth before the project was announced — not a lower figure once construction is underway. Every eligible homeowner has three full years from the time construction begins near their home to decide whether to take the buyout. In the meantime, you can stay and take $15,000 for home improvements — and if you later choose the buyout, that $15,000 is simply deducted from your final amount. You decide what’s right for your family. Nobody is forced to do anything.
If your home appraises at $200,000, you’d be offered $300,000 — that’s 150% of its value. If it appraises at $275,000, you’d get $412,500.
The appraisal is based on what your home was worth before anyone heard about the project — so construction activity can never reduce your offer. We’ll also cover your closing costs and up to $5,000 in moving expenses. You have three full years to decide.
If your home appraises at $200,000, you’d be offered $250,000 — that’s 125% of its value. If it appraises at $275,000, you’d get $343,750. Same protections: pre-announcement appraisal, three-year window, closing costs covered.
Completely voluntary. No one knocks on your door and tells you to leave. You get a written offer, and you decide on your own timeline.
You don’t have to choose right away. Stay in your home and take a $15,000 improvement grant — new windows, privacy fencing, mature trees, acoustic insulation, landscaping. Your home, your choice.
Decide within the three-year window that you’d rather have the buyout? You can — the $15,000 is simply deducted from your final buyout amount. Just submit your receipts to ERDA.
No Enid homeowner within the impact zone will be made worse off. That’s not a slogan. It’s a funded, binding commitment, independently administered by people you know and trust.
Construction traffic stays on US–412 routes — off downtown and residential streets.
The zoning ordinance limit at your property line — about a normal conversation by day, quieter at night.
Designed to fit Enid’s character, not anonymous boxes.
Buffer zones, mature trees, screening walls.
Written into the entitlements, not left to goodwill.
A funded, bonded plan to remove equipment and restore the land at end of life.
Full-cutoff, shielded fixtures aimed down — protecting neighbors and Vance’s night training.
Quieter, cleaner natural-gas backup instead of diesel — no fuel trucking or diesel exhaust.
On-site detention and managed runoff so neighboring land and drainage aren’t overburdened.
The protections aren't only legal — they're engineered into how the corridor is physically built. Here is how the site design itself responds to the most common concerns we have heard. These illustrations are conceptual and reflect design intent; final engineering will be confirmed with our IPP partner, ERDA, and the City of Enid.
Four campuses, roughly seven years from start to finish — but deliberately staged, not all at once. The first data center capacity, about 150 MW of IT, is planned to come online across all four campuses within 12–18 months of breaking ground. From there, roughly half of the power generation and IT capacity is built at the South and North campuses, with the remainder — along with the West and East campuses — following over the full seven‑year horizon. The diagrams below are illustrative only; the actual staged build‑out may proceed differently.
First IT capacity lights up across all four campuses early. The South and North campuses build out first; the West and East campuses follow, with everything reaching full size over the seven‑year horizon.
A small first stage lights up IT across all four campuses. Roughly half the generation and IT capacity is then built at South and North, with the remainder — plus West and East — following over the full horizon.
Illustrative only — no firm capacity figures implied. The actual staged build‑out may proceed differently.
Thunderbird will not use potable water to cool its computers or run its power plants — the cooling loops and plants draw only raw Kaw Lake water. Open-loop evaporative cooling towers, the massive water consumers at conventional data centers, are prohibited across all four campuses. The only potable water the campuses use is for restrooms and drinking fountains, no different from any office building.
As the first anchor customer on the Kaw Lake Pipeline, Thunderbird will help pay down the $330 million bond that Enid taxpayers funded. That pipeline was built to protect Enid’s water and bring industry here. Thunderbird will prove it worked.
A dedicated Water Restoration Fund — funded by assessments on every campus and a surcharge on every gallon delivered — will pay for watershed restoration, agricultural water efficiency, and community water infrastructure across North-Central Oklahoma. An independent auditor will verify the program's impact annually, and every report will be published for anyone to read.
Industry has been sequestering CO₂ from Enid for decades using a proven 120-mile pipeline — the same kind of infrastructure the power plants' CO₂ can use to reach established sequestration facilities.
There is also potential for on-site sequestration of the power plants' own emissions. The Arbuckle Group formation beneath the North Campus is one of the more favorable geologies in the country for permanent CO₂ storage. Any on-site sequestration would move forward only after geological study, permitting, and regulatory approval — with formal sign-off from the City of Enid and Garfield County, and meaningful community engagement before any decision.
Plainsmen Holdings' founders are people who grew up here. We went to Enid schools and graduated as Enid High Plainsmen. We are not an out-of-state developer and we don't answer to a fund in New York.
Co-Managing Partner
Jason was raised in Enid, where his family’s business, Metals USA, has been rooted in the community for over a century — and where he learned grit, hard work, and an obligation to community. A proud Enid High graduate and Fulbright Scholar, he founded two KIPP public charter schools, then built and led Curriculet, a venture‑backed education company seeded by Netflix co‑founder Reed Hastings and acquired in 2016. He was recognized nationally with the Jefferson Award for Public Service. Jason assembled Project Thunderbird to bring lasting opportunity back to the hometown that shaped him.
Co-Managing Partner
Chad is co‑owner and Executive Chairman of Dillingham Insurance, a fourth‑generation, Enid‑headquartered firm in its 99th year that ranks among the top 1% of independent insurance agencies nationwide. A conservationist and civic leader, he was appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt as a Commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, serves on the Oklahoma Hall of Fame Board of Trustees, and helped lead the campaigns that passed more than $190 million in bond issues for Enid Public Schools. He and his brother Jed run a 2,000‑acre cattle ranch in northwest Oklahoma, and he and his wife Lisa of 33 years are proud to call Enid home.
Partner
Aaron grew up in Enid where, like his brother, he learned the impact of hard work and investing in community from working in the family business, now Metals USA. A proud Enid High graduate, he became a serial technology entrepreneur in San Francisco, founding and growing several companies since 1992. He currently owns and operates an historic aviation business in the San Francisco Bay area, where he is also leading a major real‑estate redevelopment of the historic bayside property. Enid will always be home, and Aaron looks forward to creating lasting opportunities for the hometown where he first earned his pilot’s wings.
Partner
Troy was raised in Enid, where he learned the values of hard work, integrity, and treating people right from an early age. Working side by side with his father, Les Phillips, at Enid Mack Sales, he built a successful business career and lifelong relationships with customers, employees, and the community. After helping grow the family business and ultimately selling it in 2016, Troy has remained committed to giving back, supporting economic growth, and creating opportunities that help Oklahoma communities thrive for generations to come.
Our families have built businesses in our city for over a century — in steel, insurance, energy services, and transportation. Enid isn't a pin on a map for us. It's where we grew up and where our roots run deepest.
When we realized that Enid sits on perhaps the finest infrastructure in the world for large-scale data center development — the natural gas, the access to an abundant replenishing water resource, the transmission, the geology, the land — we sought partnership with the City of Enid and ERDA. Because from the very beginning, this had to be done the Enid way.
We are working alongside the City and ERDA to bring a data center partner to Enid whose values align with this community. The companies we are in conversation with will be evaluated on a clear standard: will they be a strong long-term partner for our city?
Our history with Enid goes almost as far back as Enid itself. Our families built businesses in this community that are over 100 years old. Now, we are hoping to partner with the City, ERDA and Vance Air Force Base to secure Enid's economic future for future generations to come.
We have heard a wide range of questions from Enid residents, public officials, and reporters. The most common ones are answered below.
We are committed to keeping Project Thunderbird transparent throughout the process. As milestones are reached or town halls are scheduled, we'll share progress — add your email and we'll keep you posted.
We'll only email you about Project Thunderbird. No spam, ever.
Whether you have a question, a concern, or want to learn more — we want to hear from you. Thunderbird is being built in the open, and that means staying reachable.
Prefer email? Reach us anytime at info@projectthunderbird.com.
Engineered for minimal water consumption. Designed to avoid impacting Enid electric rates. Every gallon delivered funding watershed restoration. ±1,100 permanent, high-paying jobs, plus thousands of prevailing-wage construction jobs. Designed to provide hardened backup power and fiber to Vance AFB, positioning Enid to play a role in the next generation of national defense infrastructure. 2% of all proceeds from the sale of the corridor going to a Municipal Trust to support Enid. Every commitment embedded in the zoning entitlements and transferable with the land.
This is a project being designed with Enid, for Enid — by four people who were born and raised here. We intend to choose a data center partner that is deserving of calling this place home, too.
