A state construction filing for 6801 River Place Blvd went on record with a start date of March 15, 2026. The filing for the campus describes tenant improvements across four sectors of the five-story complex. It covers 234,000 square feet, lists an estimated cost of $610 million and puts estimated completion at April 15, 2027.
The site's owner, SB Energy, calls it the HighPoint Campus, also known as Project Cosmos. Its tenant needs are described as "research, development, and engineering related to advanced AI compute technologies." Most public discussion has focused on the City of Austin's new data center rules, which are about to reach City Council. SB Energy's campus page says the site will comply with sound levels negotiated in 1984, which predate those rules by more than four decades. For anyone living along River Place Boulevard or RM 2222, the 1984 agreement is the most useful document to understand this fall.
The shops and dog park were never signed
Many neighbors remember a different plan. Investment firm Karlin Real Estate bought the campus in 2021, renovated it in 2024 and branded it Highpoint 2222. The plan was a mixed-use property with retail, several kinds of housing and space for tech and life-science tenants, according to Community Impact.
The plan got specific. In 2024, Four Points News published an update the 2222 Coalition of Neighborhood Associations shared on Karlin's proposals. It listed walking trails, a park and gardens, a dog park, a pickleball court, and retail meant for public use, ideally locally owned restaurants and service businesses. More than 40% of the property might have stayed natural, including a 38-acre conservation easement. By November 2025, Community Impact reported possible totals of up to 65,000 square feet of retail, up to 1,250 multifamily homes and up to nine acres of green space. The same report said no legal agreement had been signed and negotiations were still going.
Karlin then sold the property to SB Energy in early 2026, according to Travis County documents cited by Community Impact. None of the shops or green space was ever locked in, so the sale didn't cancel a commitment. It ended the negotiation that might have produced one.
| Highpoint 2222 proposals, 2024–2025 | HighPoint Campus under SB Energy, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | Up to 65,000 sq ft, ideally local restaurants and services | Not part of the described renovation |
| Housing | Up to 1,250 multifamily homes | Not part of the described renovation |
| Public space | Trails, gardens, dog park, pickleball, up to 9 acres of green space | Not part of the described renovation |
| Primary use | Office and lab space for tech and life-science tenants | AI-compute research, development and engineering |
| Binding status | No signed agreement as of Nov. 2025 | Operating under existing zoning and the 1984 sound limits |
Who is moving in
SB Energy's campus page names Graphcore, a semiconductor company, as the first tenant. Graphcore will use the space as its U.S. engineering headquarters. At a Sept. 17 town hall, SB Energy's head of commercialization and risk, Jaime Carlson, said the company would research, develop and test power-dense semiconductor chips for advanced computing and robotics there, as Community Impact reported.
Carlson also said this site differs from SB Energy's usual projects. "We're not usually coming in and renovating a site," she said, as reported by Community Impact. Her account was that the company typically spends years on permits and meeting local stakeholders before it breaks ground. Renovating an existing campus under its current zoning skips most of that sequence, which is why the old agreement now matters so much.
The campus is also described in two ways. SB Energy calls it research, development and engineering. An Aug. 31 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists Cosmos as a data center, according to Community Impact. At the town hall, Carlson said any change in tenant or tenant needs would require new conversations with the city.
What the existing rules actually measure
Here are SB Energy's public commitments, set against the baselines they reference:
- Sound: the campus will comply with restrictive sound levels negotiated in 1984, and the latest building permits do not request changes to that ordinance.
- Water: campus water use will not exceed the prior tenant's. Austin Water's Heather Cooke said at the town hall that 3M used between 24 million and 36.6 million gallons a year from 2012 to 2018.
- Cooling: all added cooling is closed-loop and air-cooled, with zero water consumption during operation.
- Power: Carlson put the campus's maximum electric capacity at 50 megawatts. SB Energy says it is paying in full for required utility upgrades, including work on the local substation.
Austin Energy described its own limits at the same meeting. Amy Everhart, the utility's director of local government affairs, said large customers must pay for an engineering study of reliability impacts and for any needed infrastructure upgrades. She also said a customer cannot come online if its use would harm the neighbors, as Community Impact reported.
District 10 Council Member Marc Duchen told KVUE that Project Cosmos is "operating under an agreement that dates back to the mid-1980s." He said his office is working with city staff and the owner to make every line of it fully enforceable, noting it has "strict controls when it comes to issues like noise and vibration thresholds." He also told KVUE that the construction application is under review by the city's Development Services Department.
What more than 1,000 neighbors wrote down
The Lake Austin Collective ran a community survey from Sept. 17 to Oct. 5. Most participants lived in ZIP codes near the campus, and more than 1,000 people responded, KVUE reported. The results line up closely with what the 1984 agreement and SB Energy's commitments already cover:
| Survey finding | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| High concern about household impacts | 79% |
| Protection against higher utility rates as a priority | 74% |
| Want the campus to use reclaimed water | 71% |
| Noise limits as a priority | 57% |
| Support a formal impact review | 51% |
| Want the project stopped entirely | 38% |
KVUE also reported that about 51% favored letting the project go forward with changes or conditions. Organizers told the station that respondents submitted 552 questions, which they narrowed to 20 to 30 for the city and the developer. SB Energy told KVUE it had not yet received the survey data and was organizing smaller community roundtables. Most of the top priorities, including utility rates, water source and noise, fall under the same areas SB Energy has already made commitments on, so the questions now are about measurement and enforcement.
Austin's new rules are on their own schedule
City Council approved Resolution No. 20260827-061 on Aug. 27, 2026, directing staff to draft rules defining and regulating data centers, in phases. Staff's Oct. 28 update lays out this schedule:
- Nov. 20, 2026: Phase 1 goes on the agenda. It adds non-land-use requirements for large-scale data centers and may define "Data Center" in city code.
- Dec. 3, 2026: Council considers Phase 1.
- February or March 2027: staff releases a public proposal for Phase 2, the land-use and zoning rules.
- April or May 2027: Council considers Phase 2.
KXAN reported on Oct. 30 that Council Member Mike Siegel expects a ban on large data centers to come up in December. The zoning phase is set for April or May 2027, the same window as the April 15, 2027 completion estimate on the campus renovation filing. Duchen told KVUE the process is "far from over" and that residents will have more chances to meet with SB Energy and local officials.
For River Place, the next dates to watch are the Nov. 20 agenda posting, the Dec. 3 Council meeting and whatever Development Services decides on the construction application. For now, SB Energy's campus page commits to the 1984 sound levels, and Duchen told KVUE the mid-1980s agreement sets noise and vibration thresholds for the site.
If you live near the HighPoint Campus and want to talk through what Project Cosmos might mean for your own plans in River Place, Meryl Hawk follows each of these dates as they happen and can walk you through the latest. Meet with Meryl.
