Virginia
Northern Virginia has more data centers than anywhere else in the world. Here's its advice for Southside.
Northern Virginia is home to 35% of the world’s data centers. These massive warehouse-like buildings house computers and networking equipment that store and send data — and feed our ever-growing demand for apps, artificial intelligence and cloud storage.
Now they’re coming to Southside.
They bring with them concerns about viewsheds, traffic, noise and energy capacity — but also the potential for transformational tax revenue and job creation.
Cardinal News reporters Grace Mamon and Tad Dickens talked with local officials, residents, energy providers, environmental experts and others about what communities in our region can expect as these developments spread southward.
Today’s installment: What advice does Northern Virginia have for Southside?
Previous coverage: How do data centers change the communities where they’re built?
Village Place is a complex of neatly packed townhomes in Prince William County, with brick and siding facades and plenty of windows. The main entrance of the neighborhood leads to a roundabout, a stone obelisk at its center, and branches off into three other roads.
The sidewalks are lined with small trees and take abrupt perpendicular turns in front of each home, leading visitors and residents up a set of brick steps to the front door.
Cars park nose to bumper along the street or in the garages around back, which are tucked underneath balconies. When the weather is warm, the balconies are dotted with flower pots, patio furniture and table umbrellas.
The access road leading to those garages is sandwiched between the townhomes on one side, and a 70-foot-tall data center building on the other.
Before 2022, trees grew on that side of the road. Now, 200 feet and a fence are the only things separating the residents of Village Place from the under-construction data center campus owned by a developer called The BlackChamber Group.
The two-story data center building is on a hill, towering over the roofs of the townhomes. It is visible not only from the access road, but also from the neighborhood’s street and from inside some of the homes.
Data centers are large, warehouse-like buildings that house computers and networking equipment used to store and send data. They are more prevalent in Northern Virginia than anywhere else in the world because of the state’s robust infrastructure, conducive climate and competitive tax rates and construction costs.
Virginia is home to about 150 data centers — or around 35% of all known hyperscale data centers worldwide, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
The industry is a fact of life for many Northern Virginians, who are used to living, working and playing in the shadows of data center buildings.
They can tell stories about the noise, construction traffic and environmental impacts that they’ve seen near neighborhoods, retirement communities, public schools and historic areas.
They have also benefited from the economic success of data centers. Hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues from data centers has flowed into local coffers across the region, providing a new revenue stream that in some places has led to lower taxes for residents.
As Northern Virginia runs out of land and electric grid capacity to support data centers, the industry is looking south. Data center project proposals have popped up for the first time in Pittsylvania County and Appomattox.
Elected officials there are considering these proposals while they are learning about the industry.
Because of their wealth of experience, Northern Virginia residents and elected officials have suggestions for Southside Virginia, where data centers are much more foreign.
Make sure the projects are zoned correctly, they say. Put them in industrial areas where they have the lowest chance of disrupting residents. Demand specifics about project details and do your research on the parties involved.
And most importantly, ask us for advice, said Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, who has been outspoken against the growth of the data center industry in Virginia.
“Contact your peers in Northern Virginia,” she said. “Ask them, ‘Hey, what questions should I be asking? What are the things I should be looking at?’ Be proactive about this.”
Location, location, location (or, zoning, zoning, zoning)
One issue comes up again and again regarding data centers in Northern Virginia: land use.
Phyllis Randall and Deshundra Jefferson, chairs of the boards of supervisors in Loudoun and Prince William, respectively, said localities can avoid a lot of the problems caused by data centers if they keep the projects in industrial areas.
“These are industrial buildings,” said Jefferson. “They shouldn’t be situated near homes and schools. They shouldn’t be located near sensitive areas.”
Northern Virginia has learned this the hard way, as the data center industry evolved much faster than zoning codes.
Initially, these projects weren’t as massive as they are today. When they first started popping up in Loudoun 20 or 30 years ago, data centers were more akin to office buildings than the large hyperscale projects of today, and most Northern Virginians didn’t mind their presence.
The industry has transformed dramatically over the years, with data center buildings themselves growing much larger, now located on multibuilding campuses with backup diesel generators and sometimes even onsite power.
Loudoun County has more than 25 million square feet of data center operations up and running, with millions more planned. Prince William has 10 million square feet operational, but a total of 90 million planned.
As data centers have grown, so has opposition, especially as the projects have crept outside the zoning overlay district meant to contain them and into the more rural areas of the region.
“It’s a metastasizing cancer,” said Elena Schlossberg, a Prince William resident who has been a vocal opponent of the industry with a grassroots organization called Coalition to Protect Prince William County.
In some places, data center campuses “are right next door to neighborhoods with nothing but a 500-foot buffer between the data center and the homes,” said Tom Gordy, a Prince William County supervisor.
This is a result of insufficient zoning in the past, Randall said, and there was no way to predict how the industry would explode.
When old-school data centers first started popping up in Loudoun, the office-like buildings were zoned for light industrial use, she said.
“The board of supervisors in 1993 made a zoning ordinance decision. … They allowed by-right use for data centers,” she said. “This meant they could build without coming to the board for a stamp of approval.”
Over the years, the industry took advantage of this by-right zoning, which didn’t strictly confine data centers to areas zoned for heavy industry. They were allowed in light industry zones, places where office buildings could be built, including near residential and commercial areas.
“So now, here we are, with data centers in places we don’t want them,” Randall said.
She advised Southside localities to confine data center projects to areas zoned for heavy industry only.
“Tighten up your zoning before you say yes to even one data center,” said Randall, who has chaired the board since 2015.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission echoed this advice in its December report on the data center industry to the General Assembly.
“Inadequate local planning and zoning have allowed some data centers to be located near residential areas,” it says. “The industrial scale of data centers makes them largely incompatible with residential uses.”
Pittsylvania County, which saw its first two data center proposals ever in 2024, has not done a comprehensive rewrite of its zoning code since 1991. The board of supervisors is expected to vote on an overhauled zoning code in August, after postponing it several times.
The county’s first data center proposal was approved unanimously despite resident pushback, and the other is up for a final vote April 15, after two postponements and a recommendation for denial from the planning commission in January.
In addition to zoning, localities should consider infrastructure when deciding where to best locate data centers, said Curry Roberts, president of the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance, an economic development group.
The Fredericksburg area has been working to attract data centers for about 10 years, Roberts said, and currently has around 40 million square feet of data center space planned, though none of that is yet operational.
The area has learned from controversial transmission line extension projects in places like Prince William County, Roberts said.
They realized that data center sites “need to touch transmission lines to avoid long extensions,” he said.
Today, no data center can be built by-right in Loudoun. Every proposal needs to come before the board of supervisors for a vote. But “the horse is out of the barn,” Randall said.
She encouraged Southside localities to let Loudoun be “a cautionary tale” for land use.
“A lot of people say, ‘We don’t want to be like Loudoun,’ and I can’t even get mad at that,” she said. “I don’t blame [board members] in the past but I would encourage other counties to learn from us.”
Know what — and who — you’re dealing with
Localities should do their homework on not only the data center proposal, but the developers and end users, Gordy and Jefferson said.
“You’ve got to understand who you’re dealing with,” he said.
Usually, a land developer submits a data center proposal and helps oversee the buildout but doesn’t actually operate the data center once it’s up and running. That job belongs to data center customers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
This means that developers typically don’t submit detailed plans to a locality, since they won’t be the ones running the operations.
“What [developers] offer you is a bubble plan,” Gordy said. “Very little specifics, because they don’t have an end user yet.”
Julie Bolthouse, with the Piedmont Environmental Council, a Warrenton-based nonprofit, said that localities should demand details.
“You don’t know where the generators are going to be, whether they’re facing inward or facing a community, you don’t know what the acoustic projects around those generators are going to be, you don’t know how tall the buildings are going to be, you don’t have a visual of what it’s going to look like,” Bolthouse said. “You don’t know anything.”
Doing due diligence on data center developers, end users and proposals can be difficult, because the industry is notoriously tight-lipped, said Bolthouse.
This is because it is highly competitive, fast-moving and involves a lot of investment money, according to the Data Center Coalition, the membership association for the industry. Members are listed on its website.
Nondisclosure agreements are common during data center project proposals, but they are only meant to restrict information from competitors, said Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition.
“As is the case with other highly competitive industries, data center companies may use NDAs when considering projects to protect company-specific, competitive information,” Levi said. “An NDA between a locality and a company does not restrict information shared with the locality, including information related to water or power.”
Developers may also be unable to provide details before an end user is in place, said Matt Vincent, editor-in-chief of Data Center Frontier, a pro-data center publication that covers trends in the industry.
“They’ll never tell you that stuff,” Vincent said. “Particularly from the developers’ side, there’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of stakeholders. I’m sure they’re all probably very on their guard to be careful about how much they reveal.”
This still sends up a red flag for Jefferson.
“I get nervous when there’s no end user,” she said. “Try to find out as much as you can, and as officials, let them know that you’re not comfortable not knowing who the end user is going to be.”
Randall suggested demanding details about design elements specifically. Before Loudoun started to require aesthetic guidelines, “they were just big ugly concrete buildings going everywhere.”
This is what Randall hears the most complaints from residents about, she said. Most residents aren’t complaining about noise, or traffic, or light pollution, but optics.
“I get daily complaints about data centers,” she said. “People say, ‘I was walking down the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, and I’m looking at a data center, and it’s god awful and ugly. Don’t build them anymore.’”
The JLARC report suggested that the General Assembly could amend the Code of Virginia to require proposed data center developments to submit some of these specifics — things like sound modeling studies and water-use estimates.
Two of the data center bills that passed through the General Assembly would do that, if Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs them. The bills’ language states that a “locality shall require” developers to conduct site assessments examining the sound profiles of facilities with 100 megawatts of power or more on residences and schools within 500 feet.
Roem said Southside elected officials should do their homework on developers and proposals to prepare for all the ripple effects of a data center project.
“You cannot just let the data center industry give you a narrative about what you think you’ll be getting,” Roem said. “Then you come to be surprised later.”
Gordy echoed this.
“Keep your eyes wide open and your head on a swivel, because there will be adverse consequences, and you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with them.”
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Virginia women’s swim & dive won its fifth-consecutive national title last weekend, claiming the 2025 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving National Championship in Federal Way, Washington. The Cavaliers won 10 of the 21 event titles, including four of the five relays, and finished with 544 total points in the final team standings, 127 points ahead of second-place Stanford.
UVA broke six NCAA records and five swimmers won individual NCAA titles, headlined by Gretchen Walsh, who won three individual titles and swam as part of four title-winning relay teams. She was named the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) Division I Women’s Swimmer of the Year for the second season in a row and finished her collegiate career with nine individual event titles and a perfect 16/16 on relay titles. Her older sister, Alex Walsh, won one individual title and three relay titles and finished her career with nine individual titles as well as 14 relay titles. Claire Curzan won two NCAA titles and four relay titles, Anna Moesch won three relay titles, and Maxine Parker won two relay titles.
UVA head coach Todd DeSorbo was named the CSCAA Swim Coach of the Year for the fifth consecutive season. He became the fastest first-time head coach to win five swimming & diving championships, accomplishing the feat in his first seven tries. DeSorbo is tied for third-most NCAA championships among active head coaches.
Virginia joined Texas (1984-1988) and Stanford (1992-1996) as the only programs to win five straight national titles in women’s swimming & diving. This is the first time that any UVA sports team has won five NCAA national titles in a row. UVA men’s soccer won four NCAA championships in a row from 1991 to 1994.
With this title, University of Virginia sports teams have now won 35 NCAA team national championships. Here’s the updated list:
Virginia: 35 NCAA Team National Championships
1938: Boxing
1972: Men’s Lacrosse
1981: Women’s Cross Country
1982: Women’s Cross Country
1989: Men’s Soccer
1991: Men’s Soccer
1991: Women’s Lacrosse
1992: Men’s Soccer
1993: Men’s Soccer
1993: Women’s Lacrosse
1994: Men’s Soccer
1999: Men’s Lacrosse
2003: Men’s Lacrosse
2004: Women’s Lacrosse
2006: Men’s Lacrosse
2009: Men’s Soccer
2010: Women’s Rowing
2011: Men’s Lacrosse
2012: Women’s Rowing
2013: Men’s Tennis
2014: Men’s Soccer
2015: Baseball
2015: Men’s Tennis
2016: Men’s Tennis
2017: Men’s Tennis
2019: Men’s Basketball
2019: Men’s Lacrosse
2021: Women’s Swimming & Diving
2021: Men’s Lacrosse
2022: Women’s Swimming & Diving
2022: Men’s Tennis
2023: Women’s Swimming & Diving
2023: Men’s Tennis
2024: Women’s Swimming & Diving
2025: Women’s Swimming & Diving
Virginia is tied with Oregon for 15th-most NCAA team national championships among Division I schools. With Stanford and Cal joining the Atlantic Coast Conference, UVA is now fourth for most NCAA titles in the ACC, trailing Cal (43), North Carolina (51), and Stanford (135), but the Cavaliers have by far the most NCAA titles of any school in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Read our coverage of each night of the 2025 NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships at the links below:
Virginia Wins Fifth NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship in a Row
Gretchen Walsh Swims Sub 47-Second Fly, UVA Swim Wins Four More NCAA Titles
Gretchen Walsh Leads UVA Swim to Two Titles on Thursday at NCAA Championships
Virginia Swim Shatters 200 Medley Relay Record on Opening Night of NCAAs
The Virginia Cavaliers’ three turnovers during the last 4:26 against the No. 8 Syracuse Orange crushed the Wahoos’ chances of finishing an otherwise encouraging performance in their ACC opener on Saturday. The storied rivalry was littered with quick ball movement and stellar goalie play as Virginia and Syracuse combined for nearly 100 shots and 33 saves.
Virginia sophomore attackman McCabe Millon led the game with six points, off three goals and three assists, while senior attackmen Owen Hiltz led Syracuse with three goals and an assist.
Here are five takeaways from Virginia’s 12-10 loss:
UVA’s fast start breeds life
After freshman defender Luke Hublitz forced a turnover on Syracuse’s first possession, the ‘Hoos rattled off five shots before midfielder Johnny Hackett buried the sixth. Virginia continued to pester goalie Jimmy McCool throughout the entire first quarter, finishing it with 19 shots, 10 of which were on cage. Syracuse had just nine shots in the first quarter as the Orange fell behind 5-1.
Sophomore attackman Truitt Sunderland found twine twice, with his second goal being assisted by junior midfielder Charles Balsamo for just his third point of the season. Despite not finishing the game with an assist, Hackett was able to consistently get his hands free against short stick matchups and finished with two goals.
“I actually turned to [offensive coordinator] Kevin [Cassese] and at one point I thought we were going to try to possess a little bit more and not take shots every 12 seconds, but these are good shots,” head coach Lars Tiffany said. “So we were just more aggressive, and we were in attack mode, and Kevin was able to manipulate their slide schemes a little bit and got us in some openings.”
Virginia held its own at the faceoff stripe
Despite Syracuse’s sophomore FOGO John Mullen ranking first in the country in faceoff percentage among FOGO’s with at least 200 faceoffs taken, the ‘Hoos held their own against him on Saturday. Virginia finished the game with a 16-9 advantage.
“He has really fast hands,” Andrew Greenspan said of Mullen. “He likes to get it in and out really fast. He does it at a really high level. So we tried to muck it up in that sense as much as we can. But he’s a great faceoff guy.”
The ‘Hoos had a considerable amount of help from the officials on the X as Syracuse was called for five violations, while Virginia stayed clean at the X. The ‘Hoos beat Syracuse 6-5 at the X in the first half before dominating in the second, winning nine of the second half’s first 11 faceoffs.
Senior FOGO Anthony Ghobriel, who’s missed Virginia’s previous two games due to an injury, suited up for Saturday’s game before being limited after taking a hit in the first quarter. Sophomore Andrew Greenspan took a season-high 18 faceoffs and won 12 of them, including during a crucial moment with 2:10 remaining in regulation.
Syracuse’s second half start plagued the ‘Hoos
Syracuse started the second half almost identically to Virginia’s first half, scoring four consecutive goals within the first seven minutes. Junior midfielder Michael Leo scored three of Syracuse’s first four goals of the half.
“He was able to finish off what other guys were starting,” Tiffany said of Leo. “[Sam] English is such a handful, the fastest guy on the field — you don’t have six poles so you’re trying to figure out who you’re going to short. Leo even against a pole … was just blowing by us a couple times.”
Tiffany added that Syracuse forced Virginia’s defense to slide more than he wanted during the Orange’s four goal run, which led to Leo’s step down looks.
“Big difference when you give a division 1 shooter like him the ball hands free, time and room at 10 yards, versus on the run, sweeping,” Tiffany said. “So, they got us rotating there and on the other end… just give them credit [when] they fell into a zone.”
Millon stopped the Orange’s run during the middle of the game with consecutive goals, but that lopsided portion of the matchup hindered the ‘Hoos down the stretch. Sophomore attackman Payton Anderson started his first game of the season on Saturday in relief of Trey Deere, who had scored a combined eight goals in his last two games.
The 6-foot-3, 220-pound Anderson proved to be a tough matchup for the ‘Hoos and finished the game with two goals.
John Schroter dominated Joey Spallina
While he didn’t finish with a caused turnover or ground ball, junior defender John Schroter continued to show his prowess as one of the most elite defenders in the country on Saturday.
For the second year in a row, John Schroter shut down former No. 1 overall recruit Joey Spallina — as he finished with just one assist and zero goals. Spallina entered Saturday’s game second in assists in the country.
“That’s King Kong, Godzilla contact in the corner right there at the GLE,” Tiffany said. “Talk about two big guys initiating contact and when Spallina did get free, Matt Nunes was able to bail John Schroter out. But it’s a great matchup between those two. They battled in high school and in club games, and now we’re seeing that battle again.”
Tiffany added that he wanted all of the Cavaliers’ adjacent defenders to shut off their matchups while Schroter was engaged with Spallina, suggesting Spallina’s ability to pass but also Schroter’s coverage capability.
Schroter will likely have his hands full with another elite matchup next week against sophomore attackman Owen Duffy — the reigning ACC Freshman of the Year.
Virginia’s turnovers came at the wrong time
In a matchup that had no shortage of advanced stick work and complicated offensive and defensive strategy, the simple things plagued Virginia. The ‘Hoos turned the ball over four times during the fourth quarter compared to Syracuse’s zero. Syracuse finished the game with an 8-13 edge in the turnover battle, while Virginia caused just five turnovers to the Orange’s 10.
After Syracuse tied the game at 10 with 7:15 left, senior Virginia goalie Matthew Nunes stopped three shots during an over five minute scoring drought for both sides. However, the ‘Hoos had two costly turnovers within two minutes of each other, which led to Hiltz’ go-ahead goal with 2:10 remaining.
Virginia had an opportunity to tie the game after a faceoff win by Greenspan, but Syracuse’s zone defense stifled the ‘Hoos and Millon turned the ball over with 1:09 remaining. Syracuse outshot Virginia 17-5 in the fourth quarter with nine of the Orange’s shots being on cage.
“Give them credit,” Tiffany said, “we swung the ball to the left side, got it over to the right side, and, ‘Oh, he’s covered, how’d they do that.’ They rotated really well in our last minute [six versus six] possession.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/police-tape-crime-scene-032925-8f18a182be564d3d9b412eda99cc70d1.jpg "2 Virginia Deputies Hospitalized After Truck Stop Shoot-Out with Man Wanted in 2 States")
Two sheriff’s deputies were struck by gunfire during a fatal shoot-out with a wanted man at a Virginia truck stop.
On Friday, March 28, police in Greensboro, N.C., informed the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) in Virginia of a potential location of Edmond Johnson, who was reportedly involved in a shooting in the area, according to the CCSO and Virginia State Police.
The CCSO soon located the 29-year-old Louisiana native — who also was wanted in Washington County, Md. — at Love’s Truck Stop in Lambsburg, Va., thanks to his tractor-trailer, which was parked at the truck stop off of Interstate 77, officials said.
After deputies with the CCSO responded to the scene, they found Johnson in his vehicle, and when Johnson “eventually exited the tractor-trailer, he exchanged gunfire with the deputies,” according to Virginia State Police.
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During the altercation, two deputies were shot, and Johnson was fatally struck, officials said.
The deputies who were struck by gunfire were taken to nearby hospitals. As of Saturday, March 29, both deputies are now in stable condition, Carroll County Sheriff Kevin Kemp told PEOPLE in a statement.
The identities of the injured officers have not been publicized, and “the investigation of the incident has been turned over to the Virginia State Police,” according to Kemp, who added that he has “no further comment at this time.”
As news of the March 28 shoot-out and the CCSO deputies’ hospitalization spread, law enforcement officials in neighboring areas shared messages of support.
The Henry County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) extended “thoughts and prayers” to the deputies in a post on Facebook.
“We ask our community to join us in lifting them up in prayer — for a swift and full recovery, and for strength and comfort for their families and colleagues during this difficult time,” the HCSO wrote, in part. “When one agency hurts, we all feel it. We stand with Carroll County — today and always.”
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The Bedford County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) also offered its “thoughts and prayers” in a Facebook post, writing, “We are deeply saddened to hear about the officer-involved shooting that resulted in two of their deputies being shot.”
“The bravery and dedication of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day for our safety cannot be overstated,” the BCSO wrote. “We stand in solidarity with our fellow deputies as they navigate through this challenging situation. Please join us in sending prayers and positive thoughts for a swift recovery for the injured deputies, strength to their families and colleagues as well as strength and support to all those affected by this incident.”
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