The principal at Bull Run Middle School near Gainesville, the site of an open house for a proposed data center next to Manassas National Park tomorrow, April 18, 2023, canceled the event. We first reported the event on Saturday, April 15, 2023.
Instead, the school will host an open house for parents of rising sixth-grade students. “I am not sure of the mix-up, but it is corrected,” states school principal Matthew Phythian in an email.
The data center would sit on some of the more than 800 acres earmarked by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, approved last year, for Prince William Digital Gateway.
Residents opposed to more data centers in Prince William County, on track to eclipse neighboring Loudoun County for the most in the world, were planning a press conference to oppose the project “The attitude of Prince William County residents, and our message to QTS, is simple and concise: go away. We are not buying their insincere overtures to placate us while they concurrently plot to destroy us,” they noted in a press release.
QTS already operates at least one data center in Prince William County, next to the George Mason University Science and Technology Campus near Manassas.
In November 2022, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors amended its comprehensive plan to allow 27 million square feet of data center space next to the national battlefield park, the site of two major Civil War battles, a national tourism destination.
