A new data center proposed for the Prince William Digital Gateway would come with an expanded Pageland Lane, a street once identified as key to building a new bi-county parkway between Interstate 95 and Dulles International Airport.
QTS Data Centers proposes 20 data centers on 876 acres next to the Manassas National Battlefield. The land next to the hallowed ground is now earmarked for data centers after the Prince William Board of County Supervisors revised the county’s comprehensive plan in November 2022, clearing the way for 27 million square feet of data center space next to the battlefield.
The change allows companies like QTS to submit rezoning proposals to the Board of County Supervisors, which must approve a zoning change before the data center can be built. So far, QTS and Compass data centers have submitted rezoning applications for the Prince William Digital Gateway. Here’s the Compass application, and here are applications one and two submitted by QTS, Digital Gateway North, and Digital Gateway South.
The Prince William Digital Gateway comprehensive plan amendment made last year positions the county to have the most land of any place in the world dedicated to data centers — server farms that use large amounts of electricity and water to power the internet.
Under the plan submitted by QTS, Pageland Lane, a three-mile, sleepy, rural road, would be widened to four lanes with 10-foot pedestrian paths on both sides. Planners envision a series of roundabouts at key intersections.
A QTS spokesman said the firm worked with the county to design the street and said Prince William County planners had already envisioned street improvements to Pageland Lane in the past. That the county which the county had already eyed for improvements.
While it’s true, the county’s most recent comprehensive plan, approved in December 2022, calls for upgrading Pageland Lane to a four-lane street to relieve traffic from nearby Route 29, elected officials removed improvements for Pageland Lane when it removed under the bi-county parkway plan 10 years ago.
In June 2013, the Board of County Supervisors removed the bi-county parkway and its alignment along Route 234 from Dumfries, crossing Interstate 66 to Pageland Lane, from the county’s priority road project list. To make Route 234 a limited-access freeway, crews must remove all stop lights, build interchanges with on and off-ramps, and erect sound walls to reduce car and truck noise.
Then Potomac District Supervisor Maureen Caddigan said residents who live in neighborhoods like Montclair, Four Seasons, and Brittany (home to current district supervisor Andrea Bailey) didn’t bargain on living next to an interstate-like highway that would be the bi-county parkway.
In March 2022, the zombie road appeared again on the first draft of the 2040 comprehensive plan. Despite the vote to remove the project from long-range planning, staff in the planning office never did.
That same month, the Board of County Supervisors reaffirmed the Board’s 2013 vote to remove the road from planning documents. It shocked several planners sitting in the government center’s atrium watching the meeting unfold, with one asking another, “Did you just see what happened here?”
Despite its removal at the county level, state officials still see Route 234 between I-95 and I-66 as a corridor of “statewide significance” due to the potential of upgrading the road to expand trade and carry freight from Dulles Airport, an international port.
Should the Prince William supervisors approve the rezoning request to build 20 data centers, QTS will pay for and build the widened roadway between Route 29 in Gainesville and Route 234 (Sudley Road) in Catharpin.
The upgraded Pageland Lane, proposed by QTS as part of its rezoning application, would carry 22,000 trips per day — a standard set by the Institute of Transportation Professionals, an industry trade group, a policy that QTS says it chose to adhere to.
As designed, the road would carry far more people working at the data centers, employing about 15 to 20 at each of the 20 buildings, according to a QTS spokesman.
To complete the bi-county parkway route, construction crews would need to extend Pageland Lane to the terminus of Route 234 at I-66 in Gainesville to make a complete connection. Then Pageland Lane would need to be connected to Sanders Lane, which carries traffic across the county line into Loudoun, where the street becomes Northstar Boulevard.
Northstar Boulevard is another key in all of this, as in 2019, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors named Northstar Boulevard a key route in its comprehensive plan.
In 2019, then Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland said Loudoun County officials viewed Sandlers Lane as a future cut-through truck route, while Prince William saw the road as a rural street.
Candland, who lives on Pageland Lane, resigned his seat on December 2022 after agreeing to sell his house to data center developers. Additionally, county attorney Amy Ashworth advised Candland not to participate in future votes on land-use issues, a big part of the job for a sitting county supervisor.
QTS unveiled its plan for Pageland Lane at a public viewing party of its plans for its Digital Gateway North and South complexes at a hotel in Woodbridge on April 25. The company will hold another public viewing party closer to the site of the proposed complex, at the Hilton Garden Inn Haymarket, 15001 Washington Street, in Haymarket, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. tonight.