By Daniel Berti Times Staff Writer
Updated
Prince William County supervisors have begun the process of looking for more land for data centers countywide, a move aimed at boosting local commercial tax revenues.
The board directed county staff to create a proposal outlining the process for expanding the county’s “data center overlay district” after a lengthy discussion initiated by Supervisor Victor Angry, D-Neabsco, at 1 a.m. on March 3 during the board’s “supervisors’ time.” The discussion came at the end of a marathon meeting during which the board voted to advertise a tax rate for next year.
Angry proposed waiving the board’s rules of procedure to initiate a zoning text amendment that would have immediately started the process of expanding the data center overlay district without previous input from county staff or the public.
Angry has been outspoken in his support for attracting new data centers throughout the county, including in the designated rural area, to generate new tax revenue and reduce the tax burden on homeowners. Angry is backing a proposal to add data centers on 800 acres of land in the rural area adjacent to Manassas Battlefield National Park. The plan has not yet been reviewed by the board.
“I’m not saying we put them anywhere,” Angry said of data centers during the meeting. “This is, ‘let’s look at it and let’s be smart about what we do.’”
Angry’s proposal to immediately begin expanding the data center overlay district died when it failed to garner a second. But the board ultimately decided to issue a directive for staff to bring back a more comprehensive resolution at a future meeting at the request of Supervisor Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan.
Boddye said he would support finding new areas for data centers to be sited within the county but wanted to make sure the county moves forward “in a thoughtful way where we’re not rushing towards the goal without having a good road map in mind.”
The directive to begin the process of expanding the district received support from most of the board’s Democratic supervisors as well as Supervisor Pete Candland, R-Gainesville. Candland said he would fight “tooth and nail” against siting any data centers in the “rural crescent,” which is not currently allowed, but could support looking for other areas to accommodate data centers in the “development area.”
“To say, ‘we get a good amount of tax revenue from data centers so let’s put them everywhere,’ is not something that I would support,” Candland said.
Supervisor Andrea Bailey, D-Potomac, also said she supports the effort to expand the data center overlay district, citing the county’s meager commercial tax base. The county has a longstanding goal of increasing the commercial share of its tax base to 35%, but has struggled to get that number above 20% in recent years. That means the lion’s share of the county’s annual budget is funded by residential real estate taxes.
“This is a big change. But this is a big solution as well. If we want to serve at a higher level and make sure that we are creating a commercial tax base and not tax our citizens … this is an opportunity to do that,” Bailey said.
Deputy County Executive Rebecca Horner said in an interview on Friday, March 4, that staff will likely return with a proposal within the next month that will outline the process for expanding the data center overlay district. If the board approves the resolution, the county will begin engaging stakeholders, including the public and representatives from the data center industry, Horner said.
It will likely take between six and nine months for county staff to devise an expanded overlay district. The board will then decide whether to adopt the proposed expansion or make further changes, Horner said.
The county’s current data center overlay district, created in 2016, allows by-right data center uses within about 10,000 acres in the county’s “development area.” It is primarily centered in close proximity to high-voltage transmission lines because data centers require lots of electricity.
Some supervisors have said recently, however, that the district has very little land left that is viable for data center uses. County staff has not been able to determine the exact acreage left within the existing overlay district but is planning to bring that information to the board in the coming months, Horner said.
Prince William County’s Economic Development Director Christina Winn acknowledged last week that the department has had to turn away numerous data center applications because the space remaining within the overlay district has not met the specifications requested by data center users.
Winn said data center users “are looking for at least 30 to 40 acres of contiguous land in the current market” to site their data centers.
“At a minimum, this is the industry’s most basic land need,” Winn said in an email. “Many data centers are seeking 100 acres or more.”