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- By Cher Muzyk and Jill Palermo Times Staff Writers
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- Dec 29, 2023 Updated Dec 29, 2023
Brentsville Supervisor-Elect Tom Gordy speaks in support of residents rallying against the Devlin Technology Park—a controversial rezoning to allow up to nine new data centers on 270 acres in Bristow.
Photo by John Calhoun
Several Bristow residents are joining forces to fight the controversial Devlin Technology Park data center rezoning in court.
Through a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit dubbed “Devlin Defend Corporation,” residents of neighborhoods along Linton Hall Road have raised more than $15,000 in recent weeks to sue the Prince William Board of County Supervisors over their Nov. 29 decision to allow as many as nine new data centers to be built on about 270 undeveloped acres along Devlin Road.
The vote came during the board’s post-election, “lame duck” period and despite intense opposition from Bristow residents, about 80 of whom voiced their near-unanimous disproval of the Devlin Technology Park during the more than nine-hour meeting. The board’s five Democratic supervisors voted in favor of the rezoning, while the three Republicans, including Supervisor Jeanine Lawson, whose Brentsville District includes the development, were opposed.
Marion Cohen, an African American historian and Bristow resident, speaks during a Nov. 28 protest of the Devlin Technology Park.
By John Calhoun
Residential developer Stanley Martin Homes sought the rezoning. The land had been designated for up to 516 new homes.
Residents contend the supervisors violated their own comprehensive plan and planning policies by allowing industrial development so close to homes and schools. Data centers are large warehouse-type buildings that house computer servers and other equipment necessary for internet connectivity and data storage. Prince William County has welcomed the rapid expansion of the facilities in recent years because of the local tax revenue they generate. Nearby residents, meanwhile, are pushing back against what they say are unsightly and noisy industrial buildings in residential and rural areas.
“People are angry, absolutely,” said Donna Gallant, a resident of Amberleigh Station and an organizer of the legal challenge. “The goal is to overturn the decision.”
Gallant said more than 100 residents are involved in the litigation in some way. Donations came via an in-person fundraising event held earlier this month as well as a GoFundMe account. Individual contributions ranged from about $50 to about $1,000. More than 40 people volunteered to be named as petitioners, but the group was limited to seven, Gallant said.
The named petitioners are residents of Victory Lakes, Bridlewood Manor and Lanier Farms, which is directly adjacent to Chris Yung Elementary School, Gallant said.
The lawsuit was filed in Prince William Circuit Court on Thursday, Dec. 28, just within the 30-day deadline for challenging zoning decisions according to Virginia law.
The lawsuit names both the county board and Stanley Martin as respondents and characterizes the board’s rezoning vote as “a circus atmosphere in which nobody was quite sure what they were voting on, (and during which) the board nevertheless approved (Stanley Martin’s) application.”
The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the rezoning decision because it wrongly “accommodate(s) an invasive industrial use within a residential neighborhood.”
“If permitted, the data center buildings will dwarf the neighboring residences and businesses and effectively destroy the community,” the lawsuit says. “This petition seeks to stop that process by challenging the legality of the board’s actions.”
The lawsuit argues that the board violated county ordinances when it voted on the rezoning even after Stanley Martin had made substantial changes to its application rather than remanding it back to the Prince William County Planning Commission for its review.
Among other changes, Stanley Martin pledged in a “proffer” tied to the rezoning that 85 acres closest to Chris Yung Elementary School would remain “open space,” meaning it would not be developed into data centers. That aspect of the application was added in the months since the planning commission recommended the rezoning’s approval back in July 2022.
Because the change was made after the supervisors advertised their public hearing on the rezoning, the board should have referred the application back to the planning commission “for further consideration and recommendation,” the lawsuit argues.
“Rather than refer the matter back to the planning commission — or simply choosing to readvertise it — the board plowed ahead and voted on Nov. 29, thus approving a massive new data center park in an area which had always been zoned for either agricultural or residential uses,” the petition says.
The lawsuit also argues that the supervisors violated county ordinances by approving an application that does not include a sound study or a site layout showing where the nine data centers and multiple power stations will be situated on the property. The application also lacks a topography map showing the data centers would be built on land at a higher elevation than the surrounding communities, the petition asserts.
The board made the decision to approve the rezoning “despite consistent community outrage, an outright refusal to consider those factors required by Virginia law and the county’s code of ordinances, a failure to follow the proper established processes, and in direct contravention of what is best for the county’s citizens no matter what metric is applied,” the petition says.
The Devlin Technology Park rezoning allows up to nine data centers on 270 acres near Linton Hall and Devlin roads in Bristow. Data centers were approved for the adjacent Hunter property in 2021.
Photo by Roger Snyder
The petition also calls both the board’s rezoning decision and its 2022 decision to change the comprehensive plan to allow data centers and other commercial development on the property “arbitrary and capricious.”
The petition says the board did not consider the existing character of the area when it changed the property’s use from residential to “the most intensive industrial use.”
It also asserts that the board did not consider issues related to the project’s water usage, environmental impacts, impairment of the community, welfare of residents and schoolchildren and property values. That alleged disregard, petitioners say, violates protections guaranteed by the Virginia Constitution.
“There is an irreparable harm which will occur if the court does not intervene,” the lawsuit states.
Prince William County attorney Michelle Robl said Friday that the county had not yet been served with the lawsuit and thus could not comment. “If we are served with a lawsuit, we will respond with the court documents,” Robl said in an email.
State Sen. J. Chapman Petersen, of Fairfax County, is representing the Bristow plaintiffs along with attorney Christopher Robertson. Petersen worked with the Virginia Conservation Network earlier this year on bills seeking to ban data centers within one mile of state historic sites and calling for a study on data centers’ impacts on Virginia’s environment and climate goals. The bills failed amid opposition from both Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. Petersen lost in the June Democratic primary and will not return to the state Senate next year.
As yet, there are no hearings scheduled for the lawsuit.