Region’s largest data center yet to rise along I-66 | News

Drivers traveling along Interstate 66 near U.S. 29 in Gainesville may have noticed the massive concrete structure rising from the ground in recent months. It’s the largest data center building to date in Prince William County and one of the largest in all of Northern Virginia.

The building, owned by NTT Global Data Centers, is a quarter-mile long, 180 feet wide and 75 feet high. It is the first of four data centers planned for the site, which NTT calls “The Grove at Gainesville” despite the removal of at least 40 acres of trees.

The first building is the size of five football fields, one behind the other. When all four data centers are operational, the complex will offer approximately 2 million square feet of floor space for servers and computers that will consume as much power as 150,000 homes.

“Isn’t it a monster? It’s huge,” said one data center manager, who asked not to be named. He said he likes to drive out-of-town data center colleagues by the Grove of Gainesville to take a look. An NTT spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on real estate projects.

A data center is a repository of computer servers that store electronic data and provide the processing power that forms the backbone of the Internet.

While there are at least two larger data centers in Loudoun County, and not all of the data centers in Prince William will be the same size, the complex does illustrate where data center construction is headed: larger buildings that require more power.

“Everybody is going for the max,” said Supervisor Bob Weir, a Republican who represents the Gainesville District where The Grove at Gainesville and several other data center developments are under construction. “Almost every application that’s come in recently is asking for an increase” in height and size, he said.

And there are many more.

Across the John Marshall Highway from NTT is the controversial Village Place Technology Parkwhose four buildings, directly behind a residential neighborhood of row houses, have angered area residents. The four buildings cover 1.1 million square feet, which is about half the size of the Grove of Gainesville.

There is also the nearby Campingpark Hillwoodwhere developer Chuck Kuhn is asking to rezone 82 acres for new data centers. Next to NTT, land is planned for the John Marshall Commons Technology Park, where more data centers are proposed. If all are approved, the projects would add an additional “data center alley” between Gainesville and Haymarket.

Artificial intelligence creates need for larger data centers

A data explosion, driven in part by artificial intelligence, is driving demand for data centers. Experts estimate that the rise of artificial intelligence will triple the need for data storage in the next decade. Anticipating that need, data center developers are seeking more land in suburban and rural areas and building larger on their existing properties.

“You’re seeing a faster pace and a broader geographic footprint, but you’re also seeing very large buildings,” Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, told The Business Journals earlier this month.

Meanwhile, properties once considered viable for retail or other commercial buildings have been converted into data centers. Parsons Business Parka former landscaping outlet in the mid-county area, is one example. When first proposed in 2019, plans called for a row of commercial buildings along Dumfries Road with four possible data centers in the back.

By the time the project reached the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in March of last year, the developer was seeking approval for 85-foot-tall buildings that would house three-story data centers. A month later, the property was sold to Amazon Web Services for $218 million.

NTT’s Grove in Gainesville followed a similar path. For years, the 102-acre site was considered for a retail center. In 2021, the owner, Lerner Enterprises, requested a rezoning and changes to development restrictions. The company said that if it were to build high-volume restaurants, banks and retail, it would limit the development to 1.1 million square feet. If it were to be used for data centers, Lerner asked for a maximum of 2.9 million square feet.

The landowner also requested to increase the floor area ratio so that the floor area of ​​the building would be 65% of the total area of ​​the plot.

In December 2021 the supervisors approved the project. The county had not yet experienced battles over the rampant growth of data centers, and the application was not thoroughly reviewed.

For example, concerns about data center noise only began in the spring of 2022, when residents in the Great Oak neighborhood south of Manassas began complaining. complain from the screeching and humming of the Amazon data centers next door. As a result, all data center proposals now include promises to stay within county noise limits, but the Grove at Gainesville proposal made no mention of noise or sound.

Six months later, Lerner Enterprises sold the site to NTT for $257 million, about $2.5 million per acre. In October 2023, NTT released plans for the site to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates a small creek and wetland that runs through the site. The plans show three similarly sized buildings, each with 550,000 square feet, and a fourth that is slightly smaller.

Weir has lobbied his fellow supervisors to limit the size and number of data centers in the county, which already has more than 50 operational data centers and is on track to the data center capital of the world.

A striking feature of Grove at Gainesville is the large area occupied by buildings, power stations and diesel backup generator sites. There will be more than 50 for each of the four buildings.

“You increase the (floor area ratio), you increase the amount of energy required because you increase the square footage,” Weir said. “It’s that simple.”

Contact Peter Cary at [email protected]