Officials in Prince William County have approved a controversial plan that may turn a rural swath of the Virginia county into one of the world’s major data center hubs.
Following a contentious 14-hour hearing that stretched into the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted to approve land use changes that allow data center development on more than 2,100 acres of mostly rural land near the Manassas battlefield. Branded as the Prince William Digital Gateway, the development plan has been the subject of heated debate amid resident concerns about the impact of large-scale industrial infrastructure in the predominantly rural area.
The board’s 5-2 vote paves the way for a pair of data center campuses proposed by QTS and Compass Data Centers, and it could permit additional data center build-outs at a scale comparable to neighboring Loudoun County, by a significant margin the world’s largest data center market.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Dan Rabb over at Bisnow
