I, along with the overwhelming majority of residents and landowners of Pageland Lane, support the proposed “PW Digital Gateway” restricted to data centers. Prince William County Economic Development Director Christina Winn says the county is about out of desirable land for data center development. The industry is telling us that the Pageland Lane corridor is precisely where they want to be; Pageland Lane is close to Ashburn, and the high-voltage electric transmission lines and dark fiber are already here.
Massive, towering transmission lines, relentless construction and commuter traffic, and nearby commercial development have negatively impacted generational farmland. The Pageland Lane corridor is located on the eastern edge of the “rural crescent,” which was established in 1998 and intended to be revisited after 20 years. Gainesville Crossing’s 3 million square foot commercial development is currently under construction right across the street. Pageland Lane corridor is not rural anymore!
The PW Digital Gateway will create thousands of high-paying tech and union construction jobs and bring in an enormous amount of commercial tax revenue. We don’t want to lose this opportunity to our neighbors.
The interest groups and alarmists are wrong: Viewsheds, watersheds, and water quality will be protected.
Tell the Prince William Board of County Supervisors to do the right thing for the future of Prince William County and vote yes to approve this once-in-a-lifetime smart growth opportunity.
Mike Grossman
Gainesville
(6) comments
Okay so my words and wisdom are too weak.
The Comments which preceed mine are too well said too well thought out and the author of the opinion piece, while entitled to his opinion is woefully off base.
He is either a pawn in the development game or grossly under informed.
Look, the data centers are a busy of an idea with a really short lifespan.
As tech advances, as it will, there cement boxes, power sucking boxes, water sucking boxes will be gone or greatly reduced in size.
However the damage will be done. Lives torn apart, homes plowed under, wildlife moved out of the way.
Buy we will.all be stuck with the ultimate goal…the spewing pollution from the Bi County Pway.
There is but 1 upside, the homeowner greedy for dough will sell put, destroy the area and flee with their I’ll gotten gains.
Of course our “karen” of a BOCS will have pocketed his millions and moved away.
Don’t give in to this pressure, the Centers are a ruse for the Parkway.
Any revenue will be short term and the taxes will have to rise.
Hey Loudoun how are those data centers working out for your tax base?
Crummy right?
This is simply drooling greed in action
Nobody can predict when or if data centers will generate revenue. Thousands of jobs is a total lie because data centers are built to run on their own. Huge staffs would eat into the profits each data center has earn.
THEY ARE WILLING TO DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT FOR MONEY.
Only if the county agrees to a special zoning to allow each of the current owners to keep 1 acre and their house and require them to live next to the data centers that they have brought to the area. The current owners will likely be long gone with the millions in profits they will make from this deal. The rest of us that live near-by will have to suffer the consequences of this decision. So BOCS should consider the residences that are staying and not those who will be leaving the devastated area.
All the environmental and water issues need to be carefully studied before any approval is granted. Also we need to wait until Gainesville Crossing data center is up and running before the true environmental impact to the area will be known.
Isn’t it odd that the Board of Supervisors never cites an ACTUAL tax benefit for the county residents? For example, how much will our residential real estate taxes be reduced? Already, there are 200 data centers throughout northern Virginia. I haven’t read anything about an actual reduction in taxes. Have you?
The push to industrialize the rural crescent only benefits a few land owners.
Industrializing the rural crescent will NOT protect ground water. But, putting 27 MILLION sq ft of impervious surfaces in a watershed WILL cause damage to the quality of water for our important regional water source, the Occoquan Reservoir.
Industrializing the rural crescent will NOT protect green space, it will NOT protect our coveted Manassas National Battlefield. No one with any modicum of land use knowledge or environmental common sense would believe this nonsense. In fact, local, state, regional and national conservation organizations stand in solidarity against this terrible plan.
Industrializing Pageland WILL bring the bi county parkway, which impacts every prince william citizen as this new trucking route would being off of 95 in Woodbridge.
But no one says it more eloquently than the women who fought to protect Pageland a mere five years ago of why it’s important to keep Pageland Rural.
“Their way of life is directly threatened by the proposed Bi-County Parkway, the central link in the planned North-South Corridor, which is guesstimated to cost as much as $1.5 billion. That corridor would route freight traffic from Interstate 95 past the Manassas Battlefield to Washington Dulles International Airport. While the three women would be impacted directly — the parkway would slice through Pageland Lane, sundering their community — they argue that the project would make people miserable throughout Prince William. The highway would attract hundreds of tractor-trailers full of air cargo bound for Dulles. Interchanges north of the battlefield would stimulate residential development that would swamp local roads with traffic. ”
My parents taught me there is no get rich quick scheme in life, and this isn’t one either. Ask Loudon County, they just experienced a 60 million dollar data center revenue shortfall.
As we face the existential threat of climate change, I cannot think of a more backwards idea.
This is full of incorrect “information”. Don’t be duped by the slavering greed of certain people. There is plenty of acreage in the data center overlay. And all the cables and towers will destroy old growth trees and that electricity cost will be borne by Prince William taxpayers. Think who will pay for the millions of gallons per day of our watershed? Try to think this through before you jump to support a disaster!