By Robin Earl/Fauquier Times Staff Writer Feb 15, 2023
Hope Porter of Warrenton speaks to the Warrenton Town Council about the proposed Amazon data center.
Fauquier Times Staff Photo by Robin Earl
After listening to nearly 130 speakers rail against the proposed Amazon data center, at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday the Warrenton Town Council voted 4-3 to approve the special use permit needed to move the project forward.
Warrenton Town Councilmembers Heather Sutphin (Ward 1), Jay Heroux (Ward 5), Brett Hamby (Ward 3) and Jim Hartman (Ward 4) voted to approve the SUP, while members Paul Mooney (at large), David McGuire (at large) and Bill Semple (Ward 2) voted to deny it.
The decision marked the end of a public process that began in July 2022 with the Warrenton Planning Commission’s first meeting on the Amazon Web Services proposal to build a 220,000-square-foot data center on Blackwell Road. In December, the planning commission voted to recommend that the town council deny the plan.
The town council held two public hearings and several work sessions on the proposed data center – with input from more than 200 speakers — before Wednesday’s early morning vote.
The session, held at Fauquier High School, featured a packed auditorium and a raucous crowd. Speakers – nearly all of whom vehemently opposed the data center – alternately pleaded with the council and scolded them for ignoring their entreaties.
Longtime Warrenton land-use battle warrior Hope Porter got a standing ovation after her speech. Actor Robert Duvall, a Fauquier resident, also made an appearance to express his opposition. Duvall described Warrenton as “the last station stop on the way to heaven,” and asked the council to deny the SUP.
Dissenting councilmembers Semple, Mooney and McGuire expressed extreme disappointment after the final vote, and the scattered residents who remained after the marathon public hearing booed and shouted their anger at the council.
Semple said, “It was important for us to understand the overall impacts of the data center, and we don’t have that,” adding that he couldn’t see what benefits the data center would bring to residents.
Mooney said that he feared the council “had lost the trust of citizens, and I understand why… There was much wrong with this application.”
But Hamby and Heroux laid out why they felt approving the data center was the right decision. Hamby said that the industrial-zoned parcel purchased by Amazon for the data center had been considered for Walmart, Costco, Target, a college and a residential project. “Everything has been tried there and nothing worked,” he said, explaining that the location is problematic for many uses because the site’s only access is from Blackwell Road, a minor road.
Hamby listed the pros: A data center would bring no traffic, no school seats, and tax revenue of about $900,000 annually over five years.
Councilman asks for delay
Semple threatened to derail a vote on the data center proposal early in the meeting when he suggested that more than 3,000 emails that had been sought by Citizens for Fauquier County be made available for councilmembers to read — before a vote on the data center could be held.
CFFC, a local conservation group, had filed a Virginia Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain access to the emails between town officials and Amazon, but a judge ruled Jan. 7 that the town had the right to withhold the emails based on executive privilege.
Semple claimed that the council should be able to see the emails so they could have all the information possible before rendering a decision. But Hamby, Hartman, Sutphin and Heroux disagreed, and the motion failed.
Hamby said after the meeting that he would have been in favor of releasing all the emails anyway, but the CFFC announced Feb. 13 it would appeal the judge’s decision. The town’s attorney recommended that the town not share any of the communications until litigation was complete.
Reach Robin Earl at rearl@fauquier.com