By E. Bruce Davis
December 10, 2021
Seven residents of the Heritage Hunt (HH) community in Gainesville made public their concerns by speaking out about the Prince William Digital Gateway Proposal on Pageland Lane (800 acres) during Public Comment Time at the Nov. 23 meeting of the Prince William board of County Supervisors.
The proposal includes future datacenters and other commercial development.
Other area residents who live in communities outside of HH, expressed similar concerns, in-person and virtually.
Paul Cuddihy, Roger Yackel, Dick Schneider, Mike Barrera, Chuck Zumbaugh, Bill Wright, and Collin Robinson addressed the seven county supervisors and the board chair, Ann Wheeler.
Paul Cuddihy, HH’s lead-off speaker, spoke against the rezoning to create the Prince William Digital Gateway and for promoting Prince William County’s economic growth.
Cuddihy said he understands the need for data centers, but opposes “altering current zoning restrictions to place data centers in rural areas.”
He cited the County’s Code of Ordinances, that includes, “The Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District (that) was created for the purpose of promoting development of data centers within areas of the County where there is existing infrastructure that could adequately support the proposed use.”
“This District continues the County’s efforts to attract and advance high-tech industrial development while limiting negative impacts to communities.
Cuddihy asked, “What changed?”
Referring to the Gainesville Crossing project, Cuddihy said, “Thousands of trees were clear cut, creating a lunar landscape that is a sneak preview of what our area will look like if you continue to go down this disastrous path.”
He stated along with the environmental impact, there would be overtaxed rural infrastructures, exorbitant public expenditures and continuing construction chaos.
Cuddihy told the supervisors, “The role of County government is to protect the welfare of its citizens; not to enhance the profits of landowners and corporations at public expense and peril.
He implored the BOCS to :act responsibly and serve the public interest.”
Jonathan Way, a former Manassas city councilman and vice mayor, said he was not speaking for or against the proposal, …”but rather to note some of the cautions,” based on past lessons learned in Manassas.
“Get it right the first time, because there are no second chances,” he said, adding one of the best zoning practices is transition, not stacking incompatible land uses against each other. He said there must be a County cost/benefit analysis, including the impact of precluding better projects.
Roger Yackel of HH recalled taking friends sightseeing 20 years ago in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC., as a Pennsylvania resident. It was a diversion to Gettysburg that the friends enjoyed most.
Yackel said, “When you are standing in the middle of the battlefield, you sense what it was like. You sense the history, smell the smells, hear the noise. You knew what it was like for the soldiers.”
He spoke of thousands of annual Manassas Battlefield visitors, saying, “They go in and they see the history of what these soldiers were wearing, the weaponry, the movements. But they also get to stand outside in the Battlefield, look around, soak it all up.”
He asked, “If we build data centers on the west side of the Battlefield, on ‘hallowed ground,’ what is it going to be like for these visitors?” They look at that and say, ‘That is not the way it should be. We should not have buildings,’ and if you paint them or plant some trees, it’s not going to remove the impact. So, I wish we would not do this, because this is not what we need for our history.”
Dick Schneider thanked Pete Candland, Gainesville District supervisor for his support of HH, and said, “We understand the complex situation that you are in.”
He stated the beautiful 23-year-old property on which the Heritage Hunt community is built occupies 750 acres with 1863 homes and 3,500 residents The average age of the residents is 75.
Said Schneider, “The average price of a home in Heritage Hunt is about $500,000. You multiply the numbers,,, that’s about $93 million of real estate value in Prince William County.”
Schneider said, “If we lose 10 percent of the value of our homes because of your actions to put the data centers there, it’s likely that would will see a reduction in our tax revenue, which we pay to PWC every year (in) real estate taxes. You collect about $8 million a year from Heritage Hunt.” He predicted the county would “probably lose about one million dollars in revenue a year.”
Residents from several areas of county outspoken in their opposition to data centers
He added, “We are constantly confronted with the lunar landscape of the Gainesville Crossing data center that is a sneak preview of what you are planning for Pageland.”
He noted that the Pageland property of 2,200 acres is two times the size of Reagan Airport, and three times the size of Heritage Hunt.
“That’s a lot of loss, it’s a jarring impact, and we also have got some serious environmental concerns – about polluted water, toxic chemicals, huge water usage that might affect the water supply throughout other communities, massive electrical infrastructure with power substations that will create noise pollution.”
Mike Barrea said, “I can’t believe that just a month after moving (to Heritage Hunt), what was initiated.”
“The development is not right. It’s not wrong. It has to be proper. Development changes the world, usually for the better, but it also changes the land beneath us – lightning fast and forever. I hope you agree, there are no guarantees in what you’re thinking about doing with this pitch from the Pageland Digital Gateway people.”
He believes this request should have been immediately denied and now rather (than) rushing it through, the BOCS needs to carefully review it.
He said, “Weren’t the same neighbors who are currently pressuring you all and putting you under the spotlight, the same neighbors who just a ew years earlier fought caringly for the same land, the same covenant that would protect Pageland?…
Are you going to alter the laws, every time?”
He asked what the BOCS’s Plan B would be when data centers became obsolete as some have forecasted, adding, “You don’t need to rezone. You don’t need to do anything. Leave the Rural Crescent untouched, as it was meant for families, not computers.”
Chuck Zumbaugh moved to Heritage Hunt from Reston. He told the supervisors, “For the last 18 years, life’s been good, because it is a very bucolic community. I look out at a pond and then Conway Robinson Forest. It’s E/R Environmental Resource). Is that going to change when you change it to F/T (Flex-Tech)? Are you going to rezone that, too?”
“Have you done a return on investment, as to how much we’re going to have to pay, the County, in order to make this happen?”
Zumbaugh said that because the land for data centers is hilly, it will not be easily prepared for them and asked at whose expense?
“I know you’re hoping that the contractors will,” Zumbaugh said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen.”
He said, “Right now, the pump station, I can hit it with a three wood, but when the new station is put in, I’ll be able to hit it with a chipping iron. So I’m worried what’s going to happen with my way of life, and therefore, I’m asking you to reconsider putting these data centers in the Pageland area.”
As an HH resident, Bill Wright said he appreciated the opportunity to speak against the PW Digital Gateway and thanked Ann Wheeler, BOCS Chair, for responding to his email asking why data centers need to be placed in the Rural Crescent rather than the existing Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District Area.
Wright told the crowd that Wheeler had responded, “There is not sufficient room in the current overlay district. There are some parcels left, but they do not total much acreage and are not large enough nor contiguous for this type of project.”
“To be charitable,” Wright said, “I find this statement implausible. To be honest, I find it deceptive.”
He said, in addition to 600 “site-ready=” acres, there remain 1,100 acres owned by data center developers, that are not yet built upon.
Wright added, “What’s more, land available for data centers is not limited to undeveloped or vacant land.”
“Any land is available for the right price, and there is nothin that prevents some entity from purchasing and assembling any of (more than) 4,000 acres of occupied land there and repurposing them for data center use.”
Wright went on to say, “Chair Wheeler doesn’t seem to object to repurposing farmland or residential properties within the Rural Crescent for data centers. So why object to repurposing industrial and commercially zoned land with sufficient infrastructure to support data center use?”
He cited Chair Wheeler’s statement [that] to not even consider the potential for billions of dollars in these investments in Prince William County would be “irresponsible governing.”
He said Loudoun County faces a fiscal dilemma having made “Pollyannaish” projections and placing, “Too many eggs in the data center basket.”
But what is truly ‘irresponsible governing’ is to ram through this hastily conceived project without consideration of the extensive environmental and infrastructure impacts.”
Wright suggested converting pastoral, rural and historic areas into data centers would also necessitate reestablishing the Bi-County Parkway with much truck traffic.
Wright pleaded, “Please ditch this awful idea and consider more thoughtful plans for economic development.”
In 2004, Collin Robinson moved to Heritage Hunt, which he characterized as a “nice, quiet place, plenty of space…. I started seeing concerns when we started losing the tree buffers that kept the Rt. 66 noise from penetrating into our community. With the commuter lot and Gainesville Crossing, he told the supervisors that people [who] never heard the 66 sound previously, “now hear it on a regular basis.” The Pageland project would be closer to HH.
Robinson said, “I don’t see many jobs being created, but I do see pollution. With 24-hour operations, you’re going to have light penetration into the community, unless there are some kind of buffers.”
Noise and questions on sewers concern him.
He indicated a plan to bring the Heritage Hunt community’s sewer system up to capacity has been delayed for five years, but the application’s analysis says, “We can use water and sewer from HH.”
He concluded, “If this project goes forward, I would deeply request an emphasis on locations of the building within sight, noise abatement, light abatement, as well as a careful analysis before it gets started on the sewer and water issues, and in addition to that, water runoff and our precious Little Bull Run and the Occoquan River.”
Janet Rosenthal thanked the BOCS for putting “the concerns and welfare of its citizens above politics and big business, in past [PWC] projects” and added that …”Preservation of historical land is so important for our future…”
She admonished the board to “Remember, you are all here to represent us, not your own agenda. I hope that this will set a precedent, particularly when it comes to the preservation of the land on Pageland Lane along the Battlefield and the Rural Crescent where data centers are in the planning stages to be built.”
She urged citizens, while there is still time, “to come to the McCoart building to speak against these ventures. Remember there is strength in numbers. Hopefully the Board is starting to realize that people, not buildings, are what counts.”
Christopher Carroll, a Brentsville District resident, voiced similar concerns regarding an application proposing a data center off Vint Hill Road.
He said, the Planning Office is considering a review of the data center overlay district that “is so flawed. It should be scrapped in its entirety and restarted to conduct an honest review of the overlay. The Planning Office held a public meeting in October that was a complete disaster. It was basically an infomercial on data centers. No public questions were responded to,” according to Carroll.
He said a 30-minute poll did not ask whether the PWC should embrace additional data center development in the Rural Crescent. A very small percentage said they strongly agreed or agreed with data center development.
He concluded, “I hope you listened to that public comment, listen to all the speakers today and really take that in mind.”
Lori Fenn and Karl [Greten], who live outside of Gainesville, each responded virtually.
In Chair Wheeler’s Nov. 19 letter, Fenn said, “She states that there is so much information out there on the Pageland corridor that is incorrect.”
Fenn offered Wheeler 10 facts. Among these were *1 the cost and drain for water, sewer/electricity infrastructure; *2 the disregard for historical properties; *3 the watershed; *4 reliance of most counties on the residential tax base; and *5 PWC is not counting as available, land already purchased for data centers in the Overlay District.
She said, “Loudoun County is considering raising industrial taxes to make up for the loss in taxes from data centers. Their rate is three times higher than ours. Why not raise our tax rate here and not destroy our watershed, environment and historical land?”
Karl Greten said PWC Planning Office’s Gateway Digital Corridor Comprehensive Plan Amendment, states on page two, “Pageland Lane will be upgraded to a four-lane divided parkway with the major north/south pedestrian, bicycle trail on its eastside. Interested landowners have requested to sell their land.”
Greten believes Prince William County tax dollars should not be used to buy this land at full market value, but instead based on eminent domain values.
He said the application also states, “They’re recommending a connective system of contiguous forests. So, this is saying instead of one continuous forest, the land will be divided into areas and buffers will be used as a tree area. This [practice] does not allow for the ecosystem to flourish,” Greten said.
Greten also believes buffer areas do not replace forests. He asked whether the County has completed an environmental study for the Comprehensive plan Amendment (CPA), and if so, he told the supervisors that the study should be published.
He also said construction should not start without factual information.
Greten concluded, “Districts with data centers should receive revenues generated for their data centers. Perhaps votes would change in the Neabsco, Occoquan, Potomac or Woodbridge districts if these districts did not receive proportionate data center income… “Those districts are reducing their tax rate by riding on the backs of another districte, such as Gainesville… Vote no, no, no for data centers on Pageland Lane.”