Data center developers want to be here. Google's $9 billion plan to build data centers in Virginia means not only expansions at facilities in Loudoun and Prince William counties. It will also include the tech giant's first Richmond-area data center, in Chesterfield County's Meadowville Technology Park, with plans for two more data centers at other county sites.
Nevada-based CleanArc this month announced plans for what will eventually be an $11 billion campus in Caroline County.
But ambitious data center plans in Charles City County sparked enough opposition from neighbors to kill the project when the Kansas-based developer withdrew its rezoning request in August.
Data Centers: Impact in RVA
Richmond Times-Dispatch reporters discuss the mixed reception data centers have received in the Richmond area.
This summer also saw Amazon cancel plans for a $1 billion data center campus in Louisa County, "given the most recent feedback at the ... Louisa County Community meeting."
And while Goochland supervisors this month approved a new "technology overlay district" that could house data centers in the county's east end, they did so over residents' vocal objections.
During a marathon public hearing, the Rev. Lisa Sykes likened the moment for Goochland to a tale from Homer's Odyssey, in which Odysseus ties himself to the mast to resist the Sirens' call and avoid dashing his ship on the rocks.
"Long sermon short: The Sirens are the data centers. The lure of their song is a promised, irresistible revenue stream," Sykes said.
"You supervisors are Odysseus, and we Goochland citizens, we are the ropes - trying with all our strength to keep you from making a fatally flawed decision for our county."
Henrico County already hosts large data center operations in its White Oak Technology Park, but county officials scrapped plans to streamline the permitting process for more.
Henrico
Henrico landed the region's first big data center, when Meta announced one in the eastern part of the county in 2017, followed by QTS, which took over the shuttered semiconductor plant Qimonda operated in the White Oak Technology Park.
They've been a financial windfall for the county, even with Henrico's initial marketing initiative to cut the tax rate on servers and other equipment, which was reversed. Data centers pay more than $10 million in real estate taxes and tens of millions more in business equipment taxes — the county won't say how much.
Those tax revenues were enough for the county to launch a $60 million Housing Affordability Trust Fund last year.
But this year, Henrico supervisors rejected a proposal to expand the area where developers could erect data centers without requiring a rezoning or special use permit. Proposed data centers in Henrico must now get a stamp of approval from the Board of Supervisors.
In October, real estate developer Centra Logistics dropped its plan to build a 195-acre data center campus in eastern Henrico County next to a pharmaceutical plant on Darbytown Road. It was the first data center project proposed after Henrico passed new rules making it harder to build data centers.
Though Centra withdrew its application for a provisional use permit to build a data center, the project could eventually continue. Richmond BizSense reported that a leader for the company said Centra still has a legal avenue to building the project, because the company submitted its application before Henrico passed an ordinance that limits new data centers.
When the first data center came, it seemed exciting news to Tyrone Nelson, the supervisor for Varina, the eastern Henrico district where Meta and QTS operate.
“At that point, I didn’t understand everything that went with it, but I was excited that they were coming to our community,” he said.
But this year, he decided that supervisors needed to tighten oversight.
“If we don’t do this, we’ll have data centers everywhere in the district.”
Hanover
Opposition has stalled Northern Virginia developer WestDulles Properties' proposal for a technology park straddling the Ashland-Hanover line after Hanover rejected it in December 2024.
The developer's current proposal calls for a park with data centers, electrical substations and buffers to screen the area from East Patrick Henry Road.
Northern Virginia 'ground zero' for living with data centers
Proponents say data centers bring localities enormous revenues and opportunities. Opponents raise concerns about their big demands for power and compatibility with neighborhoods.
In rejecting an earlier, more expansive proposal, Hanover supervisors cited concerns from local residents who said 110-foot-tall buildings were too big, while a since-dropped plan for a 49-home subdivision would bring too much traffic to the curvy, two-lane Mount Hermon Road.
The new proposal is under review and is slated to come before the county planning commission early next year.
So is a proposal for a data center campus on Mountain Road, just over the Henrico County line.
Goochland
On the other hand, Goochland County is laying the groundwork to attract large developments by technology companies — including the lucrative data center industry — after supervisors approved a “technology overlay district” and an incentivizing “technology zone."
Nearby residents objected, but after five hours of public comment, mostly asking county supervisors to reject the idea, the board voted 4-1 after midnight Nov. 7 to approve a plan that will allow the construction of data centers on undeveloped swaths of land in the county’s east end.
Tom Winfree, chair of the board, said the board also needed to consider the tax revenue that data centers generate and how they can boost the county’s finances without raising taxes on homeowners.
“Our job is to do the right thing for the entire county,” Winfree said.
Chesterfield
Chesterfield County has welcomed new projects — but not all new ideas.
The Chesterfield Planning Commission unanimously recommended against rezoning 744 acres in Chester where a Denver-based developer proposed a data center campus, concerned that nearby roads could not manage the additional traffic.
While land on the west of the narrow road is mainly wooded, there are a few homes on the east side, and 500 feet to the east, there are some residential neighborhoods.
“Where I have a real challenge is where it’s located,” said planning commission member Gib Sloan.
“We need to look at a case through the health, safety and welfare of its citizens.”
On the other hand, the county's supervisors last year approved a plan from Chirisa Technology Parks to build two new data centers at Meadowville Technology Park, a $2 billion investment that would draw 1,000 megawatts of electricity from the Dominion Energy grid — roughly what 250,000 homes would use.
They had cleared the way eight years ago for another data center in Meadowville. Earlier this summer, Google disclosed that the site would be part of its $9 billion plan to build data centers across the state.
Longer term, Google said it is behind two other sites the Board of Supervisors recently rezoned for data centers.
One campus would be around 350 acres at the Watkins Centre.
The other, for a campus that would need 900 megawatts of electricity and a new $120 million transmission line, would be on 979 acres of undeveloped land where the county plans to extend the Powhite Parkway.
County administrator Joe Casey said: "We created a strategy in 2019 of lowering a tax rate just for data center equipment, not for buildings, not for other business property, for the sole purpose of attracting a signature prospect.
"We achieved that goal. That goal was Google. We've been working on that for almost six years. We are not necessarily chasing; we're not hand-holding any further prospects that are in the data center business," he added.
Powhatan
Just over the Powhatan County line, Province Group of Newport Beach, California, plans a $2.7 billion data center campus, with three buildings totaling some 1.5 million square feet – the equivalent of 26 football fields — on a 180-acre site just north of U.S. Route 60.
County supervisors approved the project even though the Planning Commission recommended rejecting it.
Powhatan data center
Powhatan County approved a California developer’s plans for a $2.7 billion data center at the Chesterfield County line.
When completed, the data centers could generate $9.7 million a year in tax revenue, county staff reported. That's equivalent to 15% of the county's current real estate and personal property tax collections.
“This, to me, is a risk-reward assessment,” Supervisor Robert Powers said before voting for the project. "There is risk, absolutely there’s risk, but the reward significantly outweighs the risk,” he said
But neighbors were still uneasy.
“This is not a Walmart, this is not a Food Lion, this is the biggest daggone thing this county has ever seen,” said Lorraine Jones, who lives on Page Road, which runs along the western side of the site.
Charles City
In financially stressed Charles City County, a project that could generate as much as $52 million in real estate taxes and $88 million in business taxes over 20 years — a windfall for a county that collects about $7 million a year in real estate taxes — wasn't enough to offset months of campaigning against the Diode proposal.
Charles City County resident Pat Davis said in June she was concerned that tax revenue from a data center could override residents’ concerns. In August, Diode Ventures pulled out of the proposed data center campus at Charles City County’s Roxbury Technology Park.
Diode wrote in a letter to Charles City supervisors that it thought the county was "an ideal location for a data center, thanks to its ample land, overhead transmission lines, proximity to fiber networks, available workforce and support of economic development."
But residents complained that building a data center campus on 515 acres would wreck the rural lifestyle they treasured and harm wildlife and waterways.
“This isn’t smart planning,” county resident Pat Davis, who lives near the data center site, asserted after the planning commission backed the plan.
“It also sets a dangerous precedent: that any outside company can come in, throw money around, and reshape our future without our consent,” Davis said. “Our board needs to stand up for the residents in the county instead of selling them out.”
County residents spoke up against the project at Board of Supervisors meetings for six months, and posted signs opposing the project along the county's narrow two-lane roads featuring a red slash through Diode's name.
The developer got the message. Before the supervisors could vote on the project, the company said it would not go ahead with its plan.
“Despite the county planning commission’s support of the project earlier this year, we made the decision to shift our focus elsewhere based on the results of conversations with our local collaborators and analysis of the site’s availability to be shovel-ready with power and municipal support,” the company said in a letter to county supervisors.
Louisa
Louisa County is also emerging as a data center hotspot, though residents' concerns led Amazon to pull plans for one of two data center campuses it wanted to build in the county.
The county sold its 697-acre Shannon Hill Regional Business Park to a Colorado-based EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure, which develops and operates data centers. It plans to build a data center campus with 3.9 million square feet — the space used by 68 football fields.
Elsewhere
Keith Boswell, president and CEO for Virginia's Gateway Region, which promotes economic development for nine localities, says rural and urban governments want data centers for different reasons.
Prince George County, for example, has excess amounts of vacant land that either has electric infrastructure for data centers, or is easy to connect to power transmission lines.
More urban locales like Petersburg or Hopewell might want to attract data centers, given their historically lower resources.
"Communities spend a lot of money on poverty eradication programs. They cost a ton of money. So, you've got to get these resources into poorer communities," Boswell said.
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