The Pittsylvania County Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend denial of a rezoning application that would allow construction of a data center campus with onsite power in the county.
This was the second version of a proposal by Herndon-based Balico. The developer submitted its first application in the fall but withdrew it before the proposal could be put to a vote, in the face of intense opposition from residents and a lack of support from county supervisors.
The application will now go before the county board of supervisors on Feb. 18 for a final vote.
The county staff had recommended denying the revised application, saying it lacked specifics. Balico had submitted only draft proffers — commitments promised by a developer — ahead of time. The company submitted more complete proffers Jan. 6, but commissioners said they did not have enough time to look through them.
“Based on the lack of finalized proffers adequately addressing staff concerns relating to potential adverse effects on adjacent property owners, staff recommends denial,” according to the staff report in the meeting’s agenda packet.
County residents showed up at the meeting in full force, bearing homemade signs and sporting T-shirts and buttons, opposing the data center. Nearly every seat in the auditorium was taken, as were additional folding chairs. Some folks stood in the hallway outside the meeting room.
Mary Jack Meadows, who lives about a mile and a half from the proposed project, said she was worried about property values, noise and light pollution, and negative environmental effects. She has lived in Pittsylvania County her entire life, she said.
The new application initially included 14 parcels totaling about 763 acres, rather than the original 47 parcels totaling 2,233 acres in the first application.
At the request of the landowner, the commission voted before the public hearing Tuesday night to remove one of the 14 parcels from the application. This brought the total acreage included in the rezoning application down to about 747.
The application requests that the 13 remaining parcels be rezoned from agricultural and residential suburban districts to heavy industry districts to allow for 12 data center buildings and a 3,500-megawatt power plant, according to the agenda packet.
Each of the buildings would be 40 feet tall and encompass 396,000 square feet.
The original application called for 84 of these data center buildings.
Steven Gould, a local attorney who is representing Balico, said that the developer would still like to pursue a project of the original size at some point and that the scaled-back version of the proposal is just an initial stage.
A larger project would require a traffic impact analysis conducted by the Virginia Department of Transportation and approval from the county planning commission and board of supervisors, he said.
Balico was attracted to this tract of land in part because of its proximity to the new Mountain Valley Pipeline, founding member Irfan Ali said in November. The pipeline would fuel the power plant, which would then fuel the data centers.
Data centers are large, warehouse-like buildings that house computers and networking equipment used to store and send data. The large scale accommodates the needs of business, military and governments, but data centers also allow for fast and reliable connectivity for everyday users who are texting, sending emails and using social media.
“Data centers are absolutely essential to our lives and the modern economy,” Gould said during his presentation to the planning commission. “This is a chance for Pittsylvania County and our region to meet the moment.”
Virginia is home to about 150 data centers — or around 35% of all known hyperscale data centers worldwide — making it the largest data center market in the world, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
The term “hyperscale” refers to large-scale data center projects, usually on a campus with multiple data center buildings and sometimes onsite power, rather than the early data centers of the 1990s, which were more like office buildings.
Pittsylvania County saw its first data center proposal in June 2024 for a 946-acre campus in Ringgold, developed by a group called Anchorstone Advisors.
Balico’s proposal came a few months later. It has received a frostier welcome than the Ringgold project, which was opposed by residents but approved unanimously by the county board of supervisors.
The revised Balico proposal does not include updated figures for tax revenue to the county, jobs or wages, though Gould discussed this in his presentation.
The full 3,500 megawatt power plant would employ about 150 people, with average yearly wages of $90,000, he said. The data centers would employ 20 people per building, for a total of 240 employees making an average of $105,000 per year.
Construction of the data center would create the most jobs, with more than 1,000 employees needed at varying salary points, Gould said.
The project could represent a total of almost $3.7 billion in investment over the course of its 10- to 15-year buildout, he said during the presentation.
“[The project] will generate millions of dollars annually for education, public safety, and recreation throughout the county, all without relying on property owners to foot the bill,” according to a Nov. 24 statement from Balico.
The statement also says that the scaled-back project would create “more than 300 good-paying jobs in a high-tech industry that will remain in the community long after construction has finished and demonstrate that Pittsylvania County is open for business and investment.”
County planning commission members expressed their concerns around water usage, traffic impacts and incongruity with the county’s comprehensive plan, which does not designate the relevant parcels for heavy industrial use.
Balico has met with Pittsylvania community development, public works, public safety and county administration officials, and with the Virginia Department of Transportation, to discuss possible impact on infrastructure and the community, the staff report says.
The company’s site plans include a 40-foot vegetative buffer, with the data center buildings themselves a minimum of 75 feet from exterior property lines, in compliance with the county’s minimum setback.
Balico is also pursuing an agreement with the town of Hurt to provide water long-term, though it plans to use some water from the town of Chatham in the short term.
Data centers use large quantities of water to cool their servers.
A large data center could use anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day, or as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, according to a 2023 Washington Post article.
The agreement with Hurt “would potentially involve running a waterline down U.S. Highway 29,” according to the staff report. Balico has not yet received permission from VDOT for that.
“Staff also continues to have concerns relating to buffering, setbacks, noise, light pollution, construction traffic, and decommissioning relating to this project,” the staff report says. “While draft proffers have been submitted, staff does not feel that all adverse effects have been mitigated by the proffers to date.”
Wayne Davis, a resident who owns 275 acres joining the parcels included in the rezoning application, was one of many residents who spoke in opposition to the project.
“It is not the appropriate location,” Davis said. “Do what is right. Please do not recommend the rezoning.”
Susan Hunt, who also spoke during the meeting, said that county residents are concerned about losing views of the rural countryside.
Daniel Dalton said that he’s visited Northern Virginia to talk to people who live near data centers. He heard lots of complaints about noise, he said.
“The noise level is not mentioned one time in the application, and for good reason,” Dalton said.
The board of supervisors will take the planning commission’s recommendation into consideration when it votes to officially approve or deny the application at its Feb. 18 meeting.
