The Prince William Board of County Supervisors has approved a rezoning request for a data center development in Gainesville, Virginia.
In a vote that passed 6-1, the board agreed to rezone the land from agricultural to planned business district to enable two data centers to be built.
The data centers are expected to total nearly 815,000 sq ft (75,716 sqm) and are permitted to be up to 80 feet tall.
First reported by the Prince William Times, the rezoning request was made for two parcels - 3.28 acres south of Wellington Road, and a proffer amendment to extend the land use application of 37.4 acres at the southeast corner of Wellington Road and Freedom Center Boulevard intersection.
As part of the agreement, some of the land will be preserved as it is a historical African American cultural site, and was previously the home of the Manassas Colored Horse Show.
The applicants for the project are SI NVA05A, LLC and SI NVA05B, LLC, both of which fall under Stack Infrastructure.
Jonelle Cameron, an attorney with Walsh, Colucci, Lubeley & Walsh and representing Stack said that they had found the Colored Horse Show dates back to at least 1906.
“In the Manassas Museum, we were able to find additional information regarding the Colored Horse Show,” Cameron said. “The applicant did a Phase I [environmental site assessment] and also did a metal detection on the site – they were unable to find any archaeology that linked to the Colored Horse Show or to grandstands on the site.
"But what the applicant is trying to do by these proffers is preserve the actual history – so part of that is to make sure the history can be told and it can be available to the public.”
Stack will maintain an "African American Historical Trail" on the site, of which the show grounds will be part. This will include signage and other historical features, such as markets or monuments along the trail.
Supervisor Tom Gordy said of the decision to approve the rezoning, “The applicant has not tried to back out of the other requirements imposed, and this is a good opportunity to have a single place where you can walk to several locations on the trail and experience the history at the locations."
Despite the measures to protect the history of the site, local resident Joann Gaskins, whose family owned the land in the '40s, raised concerns about the validity of those promises.
Citing prior data center projects that had damaged local cemeteries, Gaskins said: “They did put a fence around the cemetery; however, the stones are still laying on the ground, they’re not fixed. If they’re going to do these things, I would appreciate if they didn’t lie to me all the time about what’s going on."
Stack has several data center projects underway in Virginia.
The company acquired two plots of land in Manassas from AWS in December 2021 located at 10675 University Blvd. and 9650 Innovation Drive, near to this most recent data center project.
In April 2022 it announced plans for a 34-acre, 84MW data center campus but never confirmed if it was at the then recently-acquired site; at the time Stack said the project will comprise a minimum of two buildings spanning 602,000 sq ft (56,000 sqm).
In November 2022, Stack broke ground on its NVAL3 hyperscale campus in Prince William County.
December 2023 saw Stack announce that it had acquired land to expand its NVA02 campus.
This year has seen Stack securing $1.3 billion in financing for data center projects, of which $700m would be dedicated to those in Loudoun and Prince William counties in Virginia. In August 2024, the company raised an additional $3bn fund for US data center projects, including in Virginia.
