As data center construction continues in Abilene with the Stargate data center, Abileneans continue to feel the impact of rising costs, specifically when it comes to hotels and housing.

According to data provided by Robert Lopez, the vice president of the Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau, hotel prices have more than doubled in the past five years as data center employees have relied on hotels for temporary housing.

Lopez said that when hotel demand first increased because of the data center, he reached out to hotels in Midland and Odessa to learn how they handle rapidly fluctuating demand based on oil prices.

He said there are two possible responses to the issue of hotel costs. The first is to allow the natural effects of supply and demand to take their course, which benefits the hotels in the short term by allowing them to increase prices. Long term, however, this results in cutting out loyal local customers who host events in Abilene. To help with this, Lopez has asked the hotels that can control their prices to offer deals to events that have consistently given Abilene business for years.

“We try to figure that solution out, and so a lot of it is working with our hotel partners and really just explaining to them that if we lose these events, they might never come back, and when everything normalizes, we’re all going to be in a bad situation because your hotels are going to be empty,” Lopez said.

Looking ahead, Lopez said it is difficult to predict what will happen in Abilene. Although the Stargate data center is scheduled to finish construction by next year, other data centers are under construction in Shackelford County.

“We love the economic benefit that is brought to Abilene,” Lopez said, “but those are the wild cards because we don’t know what’s going on with those as much as we do with the Stargate data center. We don’t know if they’re going to continue to expand.”

Tara Goodwin (‘01) said that initially she planned to come to Abilene to visit for homecoming, but after seeing hotel prices over $500, she decided it wasn’t worth the money.

“I started looking at hotels and it really is unaffordable, Goodwin said. “To stay somewhere that’s nice, that’s close to the school and so looking at the financial burden of it, I was like, you know what, it’s not worth it.”

Alongside the impact the data center has had on hotel prices, demand for housing has gone up significantly, with more than 120 students being waitlisted for University Park Apartments, according to an Optimist article from August.

This led to Traditions Hall, formerly Mabee Hall, reopening this year to meet student demand. Kevin Campbell, senior vice president for operations, said the university is not worried about finding housing for students next year.

Campbell said a residence hall near Dillard Hall should be completed by next semester, which will add 156 beds and a new apartment complex with 258 beds is being built north of Wildcat Stadium across from Allen Ridge Shopping Center.

“We for sure will have 156 beds available next year that were not available this year and most likely we’ll actually have closer to 250 beds available,” Campbell said. “We’ve also seen the last three months the Abilene market has finally started to stabilize a little bit, and so so hopefully we’ve reached the peak, and hopefully we’re about to come down a little bit and feel some a little bit of relief.”

The new apartment complex will be completed in multiple stages, with the first 91-bed phase expected to be completed before next year. Campbell said the goal is for the apartments to be completely finished in the winter of 2028, with the rest of the 258 beds.

Although the project’s completion dates have not changed, Campbell said they have run into problems this semester with the weather, which has delayed several projects.

“We’ve had over 14 days of weather delays,” Campbell said. “It’s just the unfortunate part of construction is weather has an impact on the schedule, and so we do everything we can to try to work some extra hours at the times when the weather is going well to enable us to make up for the lost time that we lose with poor weather.”

Alongside the new dorms, Campbell said the university bought several houses for students to live in.

“[We are] doing an assessment right now on all those properties, and trying to determine which ones are in good shape,” Campbell said. “And which ones are not strategic for the institution, and so therefore we could probably sell them.”

In total, the university has spent around $47 million on housing. He said the two new construction projects have cost around $46 million and the houses have cost around $1 million.

Campbell said the institution has paid for this by taking on debt, but he said the goal was never to make a profit, only to break even.

“We’re not trying to … make a lot of money off the student housing,” Campbell said. “What we’re trying to do is try and make sure our students have the housing available to stay here and finish their degree.”