Pittsylvania planning commission recommends denial of Valleco LLC rezoning for data centers and natural‑gas power plant

The Pittsylvania County Planning Commission voted 7–0 on Jan. 7 to recommend that the Board of Supervisors deny Valleco LLC’s application to rezone roughly 750 acres for a data‑center campus and on‑site natural‑gas power plant.

The application sought to reclassify 13 parcels (originally described as about 763.16 acres before one parcel was removed) from agricultural or residential zoning to M‑2 heavy industrial to allow data centers and a private natural‑gas power station on a campus along Chalklevel and Transco roads in the Banister election district. Valleyco’s attorney, Steven Gould, and members of the company’s development and engineering team presented the project and a set of proffers to the commission; staff indicated it had not completed review of the final proffers submitted shortly before the hearing.

The proposed project, as presented by Valleco LLC, would include clustered data‑center buildings and an on‑site power station that the applicant described in stages: an initial, mobile‑turbine phase sized at about 300 megawatts, then a later build‑out the applicant described as up to 35,100 megawatts. Valleco’s team showed a campus layout with two development clusters (six buildings on the western cluster and six larger pads with an adjacent power station on the eastern cluster) and…