Nicole Wilberg – 022322 Citizen Press Conference at QTS Data Centers offices
9301 Freedom Center Dr., Manassas, VA
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BIO: Nicole Wilberg was born and raised in Washington D.C.
Nicole received her bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA and went on to receive her juris doctor degree from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA.
She practiced industrial and commercial construction litigation for a number of years, specializing in owner-contractor disputes involving the construction of power plants, hospitals and condominiums. After several years in litigation, she stepped away from the practice of law to focus on raising her son and becoming a small business owner.
Nicole and her family have lived in Montclair, Virginia for the past ten years, where she has been an active volunteer with her son’s elementary school and in her local community.
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The PW Digital Gateway project is a disastrous land-use proposal not only for our environment, for our historically significant areas, and for the people that live in the surrounding areas, but for people all across the county as well, because this project revives the Bi-County Parkway.
PWC has already created the vision for how we want to grow – we’re zoned for housing here, agriculture there, commercial development there, and data centers in the data center opportunity zone. So why aren’t our county supervisors saying no flat-out to an application to build data centers outside that zone? Why do they have to be here on this agricultural land instead? One reason is because this is a backdoor way to build the Bi-County, an old plan to convert 234 to an outer beltway, a truck route for big rigs bringing cargo up 95 to Dulles Airport., a road our Supervisors seem to want but the residents of Prince William County definitely do not, because we have fought down this road in its many iterations over and over again since the 1980s.
If the PW Digital Gateway is built in this specific spot, agricultural land inconveniently wedged between a forest and the Manassas Battlefield, they have an excuse to build a four-lane road extending 234 up from 66 toward Dulles. In fact, this stretch of road is now visible on the county’s new “mobility station board” as the “Route 234 North Extension.” They aren’t the first to propose this road, but it’s always been known by another name – Phase I of the Bi-County Parkway. Phase II was always to widen 234 near where I live on the east end of the county, and now, that section too is highlighted on the mobility map and vaguely labeled as being “analyzed” for an “increase/decrease.” We all know what that means. Widening 234 and connecting it to Dulles Airport will substantially increase traffic, particularly truck traffic, and increase noise, pollution, and accidents all along it
234 runs straight through the middle of Prince William County. It’s lined with residential communities. There are four schools that sit right on it. In my neighborhood, kids cross it in the dark every morning and evening to catch the school buses for the specialty programs. And they want to turn it into a beltway?! They want to cleave Prince William County in two with a major highway? Can you imagine living right on the side of a beltway like 495? Unfortunately now I have to. And so do thousands of people in neighborhoods all along 234. This road is already noisy and dangerous, with too many trucks and too many accidents. It must not be turned into an outer beltway. We need to oppose any and all efforts to revive the Bi-County Parkway in any form.
I call on the BOCS to be transparent. Don’t use backdoor tactics to try to get a road built that no one wants. Did they think they could slip one section of this road into a larger data center project and no one would notice? Did they think they could slap a new name on it and we wouldn’t notice? We the residents of this county have noticed, because we are watching. And next year, we’re voting, so listen to what the overwhelming majority of residents are crying out for you to hear – we don’t want the PW Digital Gateway. We don’t more industrial zoning. We don’t want more data centers outside of the data center overlay. And we don’t want the Bi-County Parkway.
As for QTS, you tout your commitment to environmental sustainability. You state right on your website that your “core values” are “Integrity, Character, Trust,” and that you “believe strongly in honorable, principled behavior.” You say, “We strive to be truthful, reliable and strong in character.” If that’s true, then you need to walk away from the application to build along Pageland Lane. I believe you are being badly used – used by homeowners looking to make millions from the sale of their properties, used by county supervisors who are manipulating you to get a highway built that no one wants. There’s plenty of land zoned for data centers in this county Ask why you’re not being encouraged to build your data centers there, because if you did, if you abandoned this application and built in the data center overlay instead, everyone wins. You get to uphold your core values and maintain your corporate reputation for environmental sustainability, and we get to protect our county.
This project in this site is a disaster for our land, our water, our historically significant areas, and our quality of life. It will affect all of us, from the Rural Crescent all the way to the eastern end of the county. We ask QTS to abide by their corporate reputation, to abandon their interest in this application driven by a select few homeowners who stand to directly profit, and instead, make the right, long term, sustainable decision for all of Prince William County.