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Board weighs approach to rapid data-center buildout and possible future reuses
Summary
Spotsylvania planning staff told supervisors the county has millions of square feet of data-center projects approved or pending and asked whether the comp plan should include a guideline or cap and identify candidate reuses (vertical farming, battery storage) should demand shift; the board asked staff to continue monitoring and to emphasize resource constraints and rezoning review.
Spotsylvania County planning staff reported a substantial pipeline of data-center projects and asked the Board of Supervisors whether the comprehensive plan should include a recommended cap or guidance on total acreage or square footage devoted to data centers and whether the county should identify alternative "best fit" uses for those buildings if demand changes.
Staff said approved and pending data-center square footage totaled in the multiple millions, and that projects clustered in specific corridors close to transmission infrastructure and inside or near the primary development boundary. "When you compare [data centers]... the built square footage of it, it's a massive shift to one use compared to all the other built uses that we already have in the county," staff said, and posed whether the county should recommend a cap similar to the approach taken for large-scale solar outside the PDB.
Board response was mixed. Some supervisors urged caution before adopting a numerical cap, saying rezonings and special-use permit reviews already provide opportunities to assess site-specific impacts (water, power, traffic) and that arbitrary statewide-like limits could unduly constrain economic development. Others supported adding policy language that would encourage diversification of the industrial portfolio and identify potential conversions (for example, vertical farming or other controlled-environment agriculture, power storage) to reduce the risk of long-term idle buildings if tech demand changes.
Supervisors also asked staff to track project timelines and infrastructure readiness (power availability) and to report back with the status of approved projects and any power or water constraints. Staff said many approved projects are phased and some will not be operational for several years; they acknowledged that conversion examples are limited but said preliminary discussions with economic-development partners and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership indicate the county could promote targeted alternative industries as part of a resilience strategy.
The board did not adopt a cap or policy at the meeting but asked staff to continue monitoring approvals, coordinate on utility capacity information, and draft optional comp-plan language emphasizing diversification and reasonable guidance for future review.
