A developer’s plan to rezone 622 acres for an eastern Henrico County technology park was given its first stamp of approval by the county Planning Commission.
Developer Hourigan is pushing the project as an extension to the nearby White Oak Technology Park, with a plan to have co-locating data centers. The site is bisected by East Williamsburg Road at its intersection with Technology Boulevard.
Co-location data center facilities include server space used by multiple companies, government agencies and other entities, as opposed to enterprise data centers like those for Meta and Amazon, which are entirely built and managed by one company.
Environmentalists and local historians opposed the tech park extension. Environmentalists questioned aspects of the park such as emissions and impact on the natural surroundings, while historians said the project would destroy the remnants of a significant Civil War battlefield.
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Hourigan’s request to rezone the land includes uses for data centers and advanced manufacturing, though preliminary drawings have shown up to 13 buildings, all of which were data centers.
Representatives for the developer said the site has seven buildable areas, with the final tally of buildings being somewhere between 10 and 13.
The need for new data centers has been increasing worldwide, and central Virginia is becoming a hotspot for these new facilities. Henrico and Hanover counties, specifically, are perfectly poised for these types of projects given their location along the global data hub.
Subsea fiber optic cables — two from Europe and one from South America — come ashore in Virginia Beach, then travel west along the Interstate 64 corridor to eastern Henrico before turning toward Northern Virginia.
Henrico has tailored a significant chunk of its economic development strategy toward enticing data centers to build within its borders. One of the major draws is the influx of tax revenue they bring.
County staff reported that Henrico’s 16 current data centers returned more than $13 million in tax revenue in 2023. A 1,200-acre park recently approved in Hanover would return an estimated $1.8 billion in tax revenue over 20 years, according to county projections.
Henrico Board of Supervisors Chair Tyrone Nelson, who also represents the board on the Planning Commission, used the word “transformational” when talking about the potential tax revenue.
Planning staff recommended the project for approval, saying that data centers are overall low-impact in terms of noise and traffic compared to other industrial uses such as distribution centers. However, they are not huge job creators once operational, staff noted.
One of the largest criticisms of data centers has been their enormous use of resources and the danger that residents ultimately get strapped with those costs through their utility bills.
While Hourigan said it is paying for water infrastructure that will go to the site, Dominion Energy is working to have a 5-mile, 230-kilovolt transmission line approved that would serve the tech park. The energy giant’s documents submitted to the State Corporation Commission say the line is expected to cost about $44.6 million.
“Virginia is the data center capital of the world, that means we are essentially footing the bill for the world’s internet,” said Paige Wesselink, from the Sierra Club. “We have not put any safeguards in place for people ... if we continue to accept the developments as they’re being proposed, we’re going to hit an energy crisis and we will see the production of fossil fuels across our state not only hurt our health, but also our bills.”
The use of water is another concern. Older data centers used thousands, sometimes more than 1 million gallons of water daily, to cool their servers, according to the developer.
That technology, Hourigan said, has become more efficient over time. Facilities now use air cooling and need water primarily for sinks, fire protection and bathrooms.
Environmentalists also claimed the tech park plan had problems with backup generators on-site that would run on diesel fuel. Those would have to be test-run for at least 30 minutes per month. The developer said there could be between 10 and 20 per building, depending on the use and size of that structure.
Gray Montrose, with the local environmental group Henrico Conservation Action Network, noted that 76 acres of the Hourigan land had been previously set aside for recreational use, and that the county would essentially be losing a park.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the state legislature’s oversight agency, is currently studying concerns related to the booming data center industry. The study is examining data center impacts on the “broader energy market,” “impacts on natural, historical and cultural resources” and nuisance impacts.
JLARC may make recommendations for legislators to approve related to those concerns at the study’s conclusion.
The Richmond Battlefields Association also opposed the eastern Henrico project, saying that it would destroy land where the Battle of Savage’s Station once took place. The battle was one of the Seven Days Battles near the beginning of the Civil War, which nearly altered the course of American history.
The developer and battlefield trust disagree on where the actual fighting took place. Hourigan says the majority happened elsewhere in the area, while the association places the fighting on about 100 acres in the northern end of the property.
“If you destroy the battlefield, that outdoor classroom is lost forever,” said Mark Perreault, president of the Richmond Battlefields Association.
Perreault also argues that the 76-acre northern parcel of land has a deed restriction, requiring the land to be kept for recreational uses in perpetuity. He said the association was offering to purchase that piece of land for preservation and interpretation.
County staff reported that the primary reason for the recreation restriction was due to its previous ownership by a local soccer club.
Hourigan’s lawyer Andrew Condlin said that either way, the site would have to comply with any restrictions placed on it by the federal government.
Hourigan is completing a historical study over the site. Condlin said Hourigan would have to comply with any potential restrictions imposed by the National Park Service as a result of that study.
The Planning Commission voted 4-1 to recommend the White Oak extension for approval by the Board of Supervisors at a later meeting, with some adjustments.