The approval could lead to one of the largest data center corridors in the world.
The Prince William Virginia Board of County Supervisors approved the PW Digital Gateway project that will bring data centers to roughly 2,100 acres near Gainesville and next to Manassas National Battlefield Park.
The rezoning vote will allow QTS and Compass Datacenters, Inc., to build 37 data centers, which could encompass nearly 30 million square feet.
The PW Digital Gateway project along Pageland Lane, which has been in the making since 2019, could ultimately become one of the largest data center corridors in the world, and would be built over two decades.
County staffers had recommended that the three rezonings be denied, and hundreds of people spoke for and against the project.
The supervisors voted along party lines with four Democratic supervisors supporting the project and three Republican supervisors voting against it. One Democrat, Kenny Boddye, abstained.
When finished, the development could add $700 million a year in real estate and computer personal taxes to the county’s coffers, in addition to private capital investment and high-salary tech jobs.
The county now has 42 operating data centers that take up nearly 7 million square feet of data center space, and more in the works, according to Prince William County Economic Development Director Christina Winn, the Prince William Times reports.
In November, the supervisors approved a rezoning that would allow for up to nine new data centers to be built in Bristow. The approved of the 270-acre Devlin Technology Park also came after an all-night meeting. That plan was scaled back from 11 to 14 data centers and requires the centers to be at least 500 feet from homes and 2,200 feet from an elementary school.