The famous Loudoun County has a new arch rival. Prince William County recently surpassed 2M SF of data center space—rivaling Loudoun—and county economic development chief Jeff Kaczmarek (above) tells us companies are coming for the robust power and fiber paired with the ability to be more secluded. (Everyone just wants Thoreau's Walden... with Wi-Fi.) These 2M SF represent 20 data center projects in the last few years that include a mix of enterprise, colo, and federal facilities—$3.5B worth of investment and 653 new jobs, Jeff says. We're told his team has even more exciting data center projects in the works.

COPT business development principal Mark Gilbert says his company has about 500k SF of data center space in the county, including the 233k SF COPT DC-6 (pictured). More proposals for data center activity are in COPT's plans. Mark says many companies are looking for alternatives to Ashburn because the density has gotten so high. Loudoun's Data Center Alley is home to 56 data centers, occupying 5.2M SF. Mark says another recent trend is companies adopting a European model, where they rely less on a single point of access to the Internet.