On Tuesday, the county board of supervisors will consider rezoning a 515-acre tract of woods in the northwestern corner of the rural county, about 20 miles east of Richmond.
Charles City County Map
This map shows Charles City County’s location, southeast of Richmond. The proposed data center would be in the northwest section of the county.
The rezoning request from Kansas-based Diode Ventures said it expects data centers on the site would operate 24 hours a day, but it did not provide detail about how many buildings it plans or the size of its investment or expected electricity use, although its map of the site noted eight areas on the tract that it labeled as buildable areas.
Virginia has become a magnet for data centers — principally in Northern Virginia, but in the Richmond area as well. The developments bring the promise of big revenues for counties, but also bring large demands for power and water along with other potential environmental considerations.
The Henrico Board of Supervisors has extended the deadline for its vote to restrict data centers in the county and asked for county staff to redraw the plan, making it more restrictive than initially planned.
A data center proposal has stirred controversy in Charles City County.
In Charles City County, Diode is also seeking the board’s approval of a centralized wastewater facility, which it said would stimulate more industrial development in the area and an exemption from zoning requirements about multi-use paths and lighting.
“Charles City County is 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,” Diode’s project development manager, Lindeon Davis, said in a letter to the county.
The proposal has stirred strong opposition in a county where residents’ complaints about officials’ backing of the project and about financial mismanagement have erupted at several recent meetings of the Board of Supervisors.
County Finances
Charles City had to borrow $5 million last year to avoid running out of cash and is in line to borrow more when that IOU comes due on June 30.
This spring, a presentation to the Board of Supervisors suggested the project could generate as much as $52 million in real estate taxes and $88 million in business personal property taxes over a 20-year period.
The county’s current real estate tax collections run at under $7 million and its current personal property tax collections at $4.4 million, its latest budget shows.
Henrico's QTS data center campus seeks permit for 400 more generators
As the QTS data center campus in eastern Henrico expands, the company plans to add more than 400 pollution-emitting diesel generators as backups in case of glitches in the flow of electricity.
But the data center, in tandem with the county’s need to borrow, has stirred concern for months in a county where many residents have said they’re concerned about the county’s need to borrow and about two other development deals.
The county has no business doing deals like the data center if it can’t handle its day-to-day business, county resident Doreen Billingsly said, according to minutes of a board of supervisors meeting earlier this spring.
Nellie Turpin complained that the data center would be in the backyard of the place that has been her home for more than 70 years.
Kathryn Miller, who moved from Richmond to the county in 2024, said she and her husband wanted a safe, quiet location to raise children but felt the county is pushing out its residents.
Other residents said they objected to the noise, traffic and heavy water and electricity use that come with data centers.
The board of supervisors amended the zoning ordinance last year to say data centers are a permitted use in areas zoned for industries. Diode is asking that the county rezone the site for industrial use. It currently is zoned for agriculture but is in a part of the county that’s been designated as a focus for development since 1979.
Diode is currently developing data center campuses in the Kansas City suburbs and near Boise, Idaho.
© 2025 Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
