Prince William supervisors press staff for clearer data center rules, new tracking of projects

Prince William County staff asked the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 14 for direction on how to manage a surge of data center development, presenting new permitting and entitlement counts and a menu of land-use options including keeping, changing or eliminating the county’s Data Center Opportunity Zone overlay.

The presentation, led by Deputy County Executive Wade Hu and Christina Wynne of Economic Development, described the county’s evolution from active recruitment of data centers to “strategic management” of an industry that has outpaced earlier planning assumptions. Planning Director Tanya Washington outlined regulatory tools and the history of the overlay, adopted in 2016 and updated in 2019, that concentrates by‑right data center development in areas with existing infrastructure.

County officials said they now have improved tracking of data center permits. Christina Wynne told the board EnerGov retrofits show “33 completed buildings at 6,800,000 square feet” and an additional set of approved or permitted buildings “of 9,800,000 square feet” in the pipeline; she also cautioned that entitlement totals can overstate future buildout because historic entitlements sometimes include projects that were later built at…