Local developer Doug Fuller is requesting a rezoning of 22.6 acres of agricultural land to light industrial to construct a 350,000-square-foot facility dubbed the Etheridge Lakes Data Center. If approved, the data center would be located on the west side of Centerville Turnpike and south of Etheridge Manor Boulevard, adjacent to the Etheridge Lakes neighborhoods.
Residents have questioned the location of the proposed project in a residential area where the nearest home is only a little more than 200 feet away. But Fuller said the area is ideal as it has all necessary utilities already in place and sits along the city’s network of more than 100 miles of fiber optic internet cables, providing the backbone infrastructure necessary to process and store data for all of the region.
Though some smaller data centers are in Hampton Roads, this proposed project would be the first of its kind and enough to serve the region, Fuller said. Data centers are physical facilities that house computers, servers and other networking equipment to process and distribute data. Demand has heightened in recent years due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Last month, the Chesapeake Planning Commission recommended denial of the data center. But City Council members will get the final say.
The request on Tuesday’s City Council meeting agenda is for a continuance to August, meaning city leaders would vote then on whether to approve or deny the project. Typically, continuances are requested to allow more time for project modifications.
“I want to be able to have more meetings in the community, bring in the professionals,” Fuller said. “I want to organize a trip, sponsor a trip for any stakeholder that wants to go up and do a day trip to Northern Virginia to experience what it’s like to be in a data center park and residential communities adjacent to them.”
Since the planning commission vote, residents have further mobilized their opposition with more community meetings, new yard signs opposing the data center, online petitions and hundreds of emails to city staff.
Among the biggest concerns from residents include impacts to the environment, wildlife, water supply, electrical power grid, property values, noise, pollution and location. Residents also worry about the strain on utilities infrastructure, including natural gas, water, electricity and internet.
Another concern: a change to the overall culture and heritage of the area with the introduction of an industrial facility. The site is located within the U.S. Navy’s Fentress Airfield, where residential development is restricted and other development is limited.
Some environmental organizations join Chesapeake residents in the host of concerns. Tim Cywinski with the Sierra Club Virginia chapter told a packed room of dozens of residents in a community meeting earlier this month that part of the issue is the minimal regulation over data centers.
Cywinski said he worked on a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report last year that found if the industry continues to grow unrestrained, the state energy demand is projected to double in the next 10 years, largely driven by data centers. The report also cautioned an increased energy demand that will eventually trickle down to all customers.
“You cannot just make sure that people have to suffer because one person likes it or wants it,” Cywinski said at the community meeting. “It is agriculture. They can build an agricultural project.”
Some members of the General Assembly sought to enact tighter regulations on the industry this year, but many of those bills failed.
The JLARC report found, however, that data centers do have a positive economic benefit, particularly when they’re being constructed.
Fuller said he estimates the facility will generate around $20 million annually in tax revenue for the city. It would house 30-50 employees, according to city staff.
Fuller, who owns the land and would own the data center, and his team would develop the exterior, while a to-be-determined operator would develop the interior and lease out space to other businesses to store their data.
Northern Virginia houses more data centers than anywhere in the world, and their rapid growth has led to concerns about environmental and energy costs in the the state. Fuller said he took a trip to Ashburn to visit its numerous data center facilities, adding that nearby homeowners there didn’t share the same level of concern Chesapeake residents have shown.
Fuller said he’s been reaching out to various industry experts to get more information about issues raised, particularly about low-frequency noise concerns raised by a neuroscientist and others who spoke at the planning commission meeting.
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