The Prince William County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the controversial Prince William Digital Gateway project.
The project aims to convert open space next to the Manassas National Battlefield into data centers. Three applicants have filed rezoning applications for the area, which would rezone more than 800 acres from agricultural and estate land to an area zoned for technology/flex space.
Data centers are server farms that power the internet, typically two-to-three-story warehouse-type buildings. In recent years, data center firms like Amazon, QTS, and Iron Mountain have built server farms outside Manassas, Haymarket, and Gainesville due to cheaper land costs, access to fiber data lines, and water.
Since June 2021, land planners at the Prince William County Government have been evaluating the proposed Digital Gateway Project, which would convert 27 estates on Pageland lane to land on which data centers may be built.
Many property owners, including the Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland, banned together to sell their property to data center firms. Supporters of the project say the new centers will generate millions in tax revenue for county government coffers, build new schools, and hire new police officers and fire and rescue personnel.
The project’s detractors say the buildings are too close to Manassas National Battlefield, the site of two of the first skirmishes of the Civil War. They also say the paving over the landscape will negatively affect the region’s groundwater and that noise emitted from the machinery on the top of the centers will make for unbearable living conditions for those with nearby homes.
The public hearing will begin at 7 p.m. during the Planning Commission meeting at the McCoart Building, 1 County Complex Court in Woodbridge.
