Stellar Energy Americas will bring a new manufacturing facility to Fort Worth.
The Fort Worth City Council approved a 10-year tax abatement reinvestment zone for a location at 15060 Blue Mound Road.

The details: Council reviewed the request at a Jan. 27 work session and approved it at the Feb. 10 meeting.

The proposed facility would produce modular cooling equipment for the domestic hyperscale data center market and would be located at Westport 24 in the AllianceTexas development, according to documents.

According to a city news release, Stella Energy provides innovative solutions to accelerate the energy transition for the future, offering customers tailored solutions that provide more dispatchable power, increased liquefied natural gas production and greater data center efficiency at lower costs with lower emissions.

By the numbers: Stellar Energy must provide 1,420 full-time jobs by the end of Dec. 31, 2027, with a minimum average salary of $78,000. 

A new indoor playground and event venue, Stay Social, has opened along Davis Boulevard in Keller.

The details: Event bookings are now available for a new curated experience where guests can host a variety of events, owner Debra Porter said. Stay Social offers a gathering hall for celebrations and open-play hours on a play loft, she said.

Guests can either book online for open play walk in to see if there is any availability, according to its website.

The background: A permit for Stay Social was approved by Keller City Council Nov. 19. Council members previously tabled the approval due to noise concerns for the business.

• Opened Feb. 25
• 8849 Davis Blvd., Ste. 200, Keller

MP Materials Corp. announced it has selected a 120-acre site in Northlake for its 10X campus, a planned large-scale earth magnet manufacturing campus in the Alliance area of Fort Worth.

Located less than 10 miles from another MP Materials’ Independence facility in Fort Worth, the 10X facility is expected to contribute to the company’s total production capacity of approximately 10,000 metric tons of neodymium-iron-boron, or NdFeB, rare earth magnets per year once it is operational, according to a news release.

A closer look: The site, which will be acquired from Hillwood, is within the AllianceTexas development and was selected following a national site evaluation process led by CBRE, a commercial real estate company.

MP Materials is expected to invest more than $1.25 billion into the project and create 1,500 direct manufacturing and engineering jobs with an average annual salary of $74,315, according to previous reporting.

Quote of note: “AllianceTexas continues to attract advanced manufacturing that creates jobs, diversifies our economy and strengthens America’s supply chain,” Hillwood Chair Ross Perot Jr. said.

The Texas Education Agency must correct roughly 4,200 errors in its elementary and middle school curriculum, the State Board of Education ruled Feb. 25.

The overview: The changes to the Bluebonnet Learning materials, a set of state-developed textbooks, include replacing improperly licensed images, fixing formatting errors or typos and correcting factual errors.

The SBOE approved the Bluebonnet materials in November 2024. The curriculum, which became available to districts ahead of the 2025-26 school year, has been criticized for frequent biblical references in the reading materials, although proponents said the materials would help improve student outcomes.

Zooming in: Before approving the changes, several board members expressed concerns about the “unprecedented” number of issues with the state-developed textbooks, noting that Texas taxpayers will cover the costs of reprinting the updated materials, as they were developed with state funds.

“I’m very concerned that, as a board, we have set a precedent for sloppy publishing. Many times, even if it's a typo, it could become an error of fact,” SBOE member Pam Little, R-Fairview, said.