Judge Throws Out Zoning Approval For 2,100-Acre Northern Virginia Data Center Project
A project that was billed as creating the largest data center corridor in the world has had its zoning approval thrown out by a judge, throwing the future of more than 2,000 acres in Northern Virginia into question.
Virginia Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving ruled Thursday that Prince William County violated the state and county's public notice rules when it advertised the hearing to rezone the land that would become the Prince William Digital Gateway project. She declared the zoning approval void.
Blackstone-subsidiary QTS and Compass Datacenters plan to develop large data center campuses that at full build-out would span 34 buildings, 22M SF and 1.7 gigawatts of capacity on 2,139 acres. The rural land abuts the historic Manassas National Battlefield Park, where the first major land battle of the Civil War took place.
The project was approved in December 2023 after a 27-hour hearing and years of pushback from neighbors who took issue with massive industrial buildings being erected in the bucolic setting.
Roughly 400 people spoke at the meeting, but Irving ruled that the county didn't follow the law in advertising the meeting because it didn't send out two public notices within at least six days of each other and didn't publish the meeting's materials until five days prior.
Twelve Prince William County residents filed the lawsuit last year — including a handful who spoke at the meeting — but three of the plaintiffs didn't, which Irving said gave them standing to sue.
The hearing was held less than a month before a new slate of county supervisors, including a new chair of the Board of Supervisors, were set to be inaugurated. Prince William County Chair At-Large Deshundra Jefferson said in a statement Friday that she doesn't support the Digital Gateway project and will look for other paths forward for the land.
“I was adamantly against the rezoning when I ran for office, and I am even more so now,” Jefferson said in the statement. “Data centers have enabled us to expand our commercial tax base, but that has come at a high cost to other economic development and to our quality of life.”
The county board is consulting with its attorney to determine the next steps forward, Jefferson's spokesperson said.
“We are disappointed in the court’s decision and are assessing our options moving forward,” a spokesperson for Compass Datacenters said in a statement. “We remain committed to building a first class data center campus in Prince William County and will provide further comment as events warrant.”
A QTS spokesperson said the company is disappointed in the decision but will nonetheless press forward on the project.
“The Prince William Board of County Supervisors previously approved this project, and this decision is delaying critical infrastructure required for American AI as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in local annual tax revenue and thousands of new job opportunities for the county,” the spokesperson said.
Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world, but a massive increase in energy usage and political pushback have started to blunt its growth. Last year, a report from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that data centers consume energy that would power 60% of Virginia households.
The commonwealth's General Assembly passed a bill this year that would require data center developers to perform site studies and environmental reviews, but it was vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
UPDATE, AUG. 8, 4:20 P.M. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from QTS.
