UPDATED: Supervisors OK plan for data centers near battlefield after marathon public hearing

The Prince William Digital Gateway – a controversial plan to open 2,100 acres adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park and within the county’s protected “rural crescent” to data centers -- took a major step forward Wednesday when the board of supervisors approved a comprehensive plan amendment designed to make it a reality. 

After a contentious 15-hour meeting and public hearing that began at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1, and stretched until almost 10 a.m., the board voted 5-2 to approve the plan in a party-line vote. 

The motion was made by Supervisor Victor Angry, D-Neabsco, and seconded by Supervisor Andrea Bailey, D-Potomac.  

Angry and Bailey voted in favor along with Board Chair Ann Wheeler (At Large), Supervisor Kenny Boddye (Occoquan) and Margaret Franklin (Woodbridge). Republican Supervisors Jeanine Lawson (Brentsville) and Yesli Vega (Coles) voted against the plan.  

The move came after about 300 speakers gave nearly 10 hours of public comments both for and against the plan, first proposed nearly two years ago. 

According to their arguments, the plan is either a once-in-a-lifetime economic boon for an area residents say is no longer rural because of heavy traffic and existing power lines  -- or it will create “a massive concrete jungle,” as one opponent put it, that will degrade the battlefield and pose threats to the environment and the Occoquan Reservoir, which provides drinking water to 800,000 Northern Virginia residents, including 350,000 in Prince William County. 

 Dozens spoke in favor of the project and included several of the 100 property owners who are under contract to sell their land to data center developers if the rezonings tied to the project are approved. Many other supporters identified themselves as union electricians who said the data centers would provide decades of work for local laborers. 

Some speakers characterized the fight as the “Third Battle of Manassas,” a comparison to the Civil War battles that made Manassas famous as well as land battles in the 1980s and 1990s over a shopping mall and a Disney theme park that were once proposed – but never materialized – on land near the national park.  

More than 30 local, regional and national conservation organizations urged the board to reject the plan in a letter delivered Tuesday. Many speakers echoed their sentiments, decrying the damage to the landscape and saying the county would be forever changed by the industrial corridor. 

Manassas National Battlefield Acting Superintendent Raquel Montez stayed until after 5 a.m. to offer comments about the park’s concerns about impacts on wildlife, views, traffic and visitor experiences.  

In an interview, Montez said the park’s first choice would be for the area to retain its rural character. Montez’s predecessor, Brandon Bies, called the plan the “greatest single threat to the park in decades” late last year. 

“Do we like the proposal? No. But we understand that the landowners want to sell their land and that’s between them and the county,” Montez said. 

The plan is estimated to generate about $400 million in tax revenue annually at full build out, which is expected to take about 20 years. Supporters stressed that the county needed that money fo schools and public services.

Gainesville District School Board Jenn Wall spoke during public comment time to urge the board not to approve the PW Digital Gateway. Wall said the county should wait until the data centers under way in the county's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District are built out and raise the county's tax rate on existing data centers before opening the rural area.

"Our rate is embarrassingly low. Even if we were to double the rate, our rate would still be lower than Greene County's. Even Fauquier County's rate is higher than ours," Wall said. "...We have traded away our natural resources for much too little."

Lelia Bartruff, who said her Pageland Lane home and 8 acres are under contract to one of the data centers, said she believes data centers are a better alternative for the corridor than denser housing, which some have said could happen if the data centers were not approved. Although that change would also take a rezoning that supervisors could vote up or down.

Bartruff said the data center developer won't buy her land until the rezoning is approved, a process she said might take "years."

"We're not going anywhere until we have to," she said. "It's not a good plan for me because I like my place. But I can't look at something that offers parks and trails to the county and brush it off."

Plan seeks to mix centers with open space 

The vote means that the 2,139 acres in the PW Digital Gateway “study area” will be redesignated from “agricultural and estate,” where development is limited to one home on 10 acres, to a mix of “tech/flex” buildings, parks, open space and environmental uses. The Gateway study area is composed of 194 parcels stretching from U.S. 29 to Sudley Road along Pageland Lane in Gainesville. 

The largest portion – 1,321 acres – is now “tech/flex,” allowing for up to 27.6 million square feet of data center space. That’s nearly as big as the 29 million square feet of data centers operating in Loudoun County, the largest data center hub in the United States. 

About 800 privately owned acres are now redesignated as future parks and open space, while 9.6 acres are designated a “county historic registered site" and 440 acres will remain an environmental resource protection area. 

For the data centers to be built, the areas would still need to be rezoned. The county has received three rezoning applications covering 1,600 acres. 

The Gateway plan envisions that about 10 acres closest to the battlefield will be donated to the battlefield, but it’s not clear how that will happen. County staff said during the meeting that the county could buy the land or acquire it through other “tools” such as developer incentives. 

In his motion, Angry added more than a dozen changes to the staff’s latest version of the Gateway amendment to address historic preservation guidelines, stormwater management, wildlife corridors, noise mitigations, water quality testing and road design measures that board members said would prevent a widened Pageland Lane from becoming a “backdoor to the Bi-County Parkway.” 

The plan proposes widening Pageland Lane to four lanes, which some residents had feared would essentially complete a key segment that could revive the formerly proposed parkway.  

According to the plan, the widened roadway should be designed with roundabouts spaced to require the speed limit of 45 miles per hour rather than the 55 that might be expected on a road like the Bi-County Parkway.  

The widened Pageland Lane is also proposed to connect only U.S. 29 and Sudley Road and not extend farther north into Loudoun as the original Bi-County Parkway would have. 

The supervisors also strengthened guidelines for archeological investigation throughout the corridor, set guidelines to preserve in place any human remains discovered and to not disturb areas of historical significance, if possible. Franklin and Boddye said those areas should include the northeast corner of the study area, which is believed to be the location of the birthplace of Jennie Dean, a local icon who was born enslaved and later founded the first high school in Northern Virginia for African American students. 

After debate, Angry conceded to adding the county staff’s recommendation encouraging developers to maintain three wildlife corridors of at least 300 to 500 feet in width. Angry said he hoped the county could be flexible about the location of those corridors at the rezoning phase. 

But those changes weren’t enough to placate Vega and Lawson, who criticized their fellow supervisors for not taking more time to study impacts on the Occoquan watershed or analyze the cost of needed infrastructure, such as water, sewer and power lines. 

“In 2019, at least half of us ran on preserving the rural crescent, and none of us ran on turning it into the largest data center corridor in the world,” Vega said before the vote. “What really disgusts me about this process is that it has not been transparent.”  

Vega, the GOP nominee for U.S. Congress in the 7^th District, said calls for further study were not unreasonable. “You were asking your elected representatives to be diligent, to slow down, to be thorough.” Vega said she might have supported the plan if the extra scrutiny “checked out.” 

Lawson, however, said the plan “is not a golden goose but rather fools’ gold” and criticized the plan as a “shortsighted” effort “to appease big tech … and a small group of landowners.” Lawson said that if the board wanted to raise its commercial tax base it only had to raise the county’s tax rate on computers and peripherals, which at $1.65 per $100 in assessed value is significantly lower than Loudoun, Fauquier and Fairfax counties. 

Angry defended the plan as “bold” and said the county had to “take a shot.” 

Wheeler agreed, saying: “This is a bold plan.” She also chastised the plan’s critics for not working together to make the plan as good as it could be and downplayed the plan’s environmental impacts, saying: “Sustainability is not about doing nothing. It is about doing things well.” 

“I know this is a good project for Prince William County,” Wheeler said. “I know we will do the stormwater protections well… We are a county that needs to move forward and we need to do it together.” 

Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com