A data center campus is coming to Appomattox County, local officials and a developer announced Tuesday.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Avaio Digital Partners is paying about $4.5 million for a 452-acre site at the county’s industrial park, said Garet Bosiger, chairman of the Appomattox County Economic Development Authority. Avaio will invest $3 billion in the development, including construction, data systems and power, Bosiger said.
Construction will begin in fall 2025 and should be complete about two years later, he said.
It’s great news for an area that never fully recovered after Thomasville Furniture ceased operations in 2011, he said. The county bought 550 acres for the park about 25 years ago and has used it for some businesses and a recreational park. The 450-acre parcel has been vacant throughout, though.
Bosiger said there could be between 200 and 250 “very good-paying jobs” when the center opens.
“Appomattox needed a shot in the arm,” Bosiger said. “We haven’t had a lot going on and this is a big deal for local jobs and … it’s a tax relief.”
Data centers are large, warehouse-like buildings that house computers and networking equipment used to store, back up, process and share digital information. Businesses, military and governments use them in large-scale ways, but everyday users who text, send emails and use social media rely on their fast and reliable connectivity.
The site is accessible from U.S. 460 and Virginia 26, just north of the county’s namesake town. In a news release Tuesday, Avaio said that it had signed an agreement with the economic development authority to develop the site. The company has confirmed it will have access to 300 megawatts of power from Central Virginia Electric Cooperative and Dominion Energy, and also plans to use “onsite substantial green power.”
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
The land is “strategically located atop major long-haul fiber lines with direct links to major hubs, and is cleared and ready for rapid construction,” Avaio said in the news release.
The company, through a publicist, said it would “not be able” to answer questions before a publication deadline on Tuesday, including how many jobs will be filled during construction, how many of those will be from the Appomattox area, how many jobs will be required to run the facility and whether those jobs will be local, what will the green energy source be, and what percentage of the data center’s power would come from that source.
Bosiger, citing a study that Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission released Monday, said that a typical data center employs about 1,500 during peak construction, with workers from multiple industries.
“They would deal with contractors that are local, because they would need to move dirt and, of course, build buildings,” he said. “They said they would try to get any local contractors they could. They haven’t approached these contractors yet.”
The JLARC study also showed that a 250,000-square-foot data center might employ about 50 full-time workers. It is unclear, however, how large a campus Avaio Digital has planned. That was among the questions the company declined to answer on Tuesday.
Bosiger said that he believes the county will start working to train for data center jobs, particularly through Central Virginia Community College’s extension in Appomattox.
The Avaio project is the second data center announced in Southside in recent months. Pittsylvania County supervisors approved a zoning change that will bring a data center to Ringgold, with construction set to begin in about a year. Developers are crafting a rezoning proposal for a second possible center in the county.
Avaio Digital’s website includes a project list page that counts two others in development in Virginia, at Ladysmith and Ruther Glen. Those Caroline County communities, situated between Richmond and Fredericksburg, are within a dozen minutes of each other via Interstate 95. The site lists five other projects in North America and three in Europe as “under development.”
Virginia is home to 150 data centers — or about 35% of all known hyperscale data centers worldwide — making it the largest data center market in the world.
Almost all of them are located in Northern Virginia, though Mecklenburg County and Lynchburg are among other parts of the state that have them. Southwest Virginia economic development officials say they want to attract data centers to their region, too.
“This project in Appomattox County exemplifies our strategy of expanding Virginia’s thriving data center industry beyond traditional hubs, bringing high-tech jobs and significant investment to communities across the Commonwealth,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in the news release. “By leveraging Virginia’s world-class digital infrastructure and business-friendly environment, we’re creating opportunities for economic growth and diversification in every region of our state.”
The Appomattox project has been in the works for two years, Bosiger said. He credited Nathan Simpson, a tech entrepreneur in town, with making introductions. Others including Gary Wood, Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s CEO; Community Development Director Johnnie Roark; and County Administrator Susan Adams were instrumental in making the deal happen, he said.
“We’ve marketed this industrial park previously, and we came in a close second to another large company several years ago, but they located down beyond Richmond somewhere,” Bosiger said. “So this has been ongoing. We wanted to bring something that created good jobs, good paying jobs as well as capital investment.”
The parties agreed on $10,000 per acre, which a commercial appraiser determined, he said.
The JLARC study found that in five Virginia localities with “relatively mature” data center markets, tax revenue ranged from less than 1% to 31% of the total local revenue. With data center revenue, local governments have been able to lower real estate taxes, establish reserve funds, construct new schools and look toward developing affordable housing, according to JLARC.
“Appomattox is a small county of approximately 15,000 people and they have to tax real estate or machine tools and things like that,” Bosiger said. “And it’s quite a burden on the citizens. To get something like this is a huge relief from a tax base standpoint.”
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