Ashburn is the data center capital of the world, but those massive gray boxes don't exactly build neighborly culture or create many local jobs. Is it time residents demand zoning that prioritizes people over server farms?
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Add your commentAnyone who thinks these data centers are paying their fair share in Virginia clearly hasn't looked at the state tax code. Virginia eliminated the sales tax on data center equipment purchases back in 2010 and that exemption has cost the state BILLIONS. Billions. With a B. And Loudoun County competes against itself offering additional local sweeteners to attract these companies. It's a race to the bottom and the residents are the ones who lose. I'd love to see even ONE county supervisor explain this publicly with a straight face.
Born and raised in Ashburn back when this was still horse country and Loudoun County actually meant something. Now I drive down Shellhorn Road and it's just wall after wall of these gray monoliths with zero windows and a constant hum you can feel in your chest. My kids can't afford to live here partly because all this industrial-scale development drove up land prices without driving up the kind of economy that actually employs regular people. A data center employs maybe 30 people full time. THIRTY. For a building the size of three football fields. That is not a trade I agreed to.
The tax revenue argument is actually way weaker than the county lets on. Data centers get MASSIVE equipment depreciation deductions and negotiated tax incentives that gut the actual return to Loudoun taxpayers. Meanwhile our schools are overcrowded, Route 7 is a parking lot, and we're supposed to be grateful? Someone needs to audit exactly how much net revenue these facilities actually generate per acre compared to, say, mixed-use residential or a proper business park with actual office jobs.
Fun fact that nobody seems to mention: data centers consume an absolutely staggering amount of water for cooling. Dominion Energy and the local water authorities are already strained. I've been to two county planning meetings where residents raised this and got basically pat answers about "sustainable cooling technologies" that are years away from being standard. We are literally depleting regional water resources so someone's TikTok video can buffer 0.2 seconds faster. Great trade, guys.
Nope. Not buying the outrage. Where was all this community concern ten years ago when the approvals were flying through? Everyone liked the quiet, tidy industrial neighbor that didn't generate school kids or traffic. Now it's fashionable to complain. The real question nobody wants to answer: what specific development do you actually want instead? Because every time someone proposes townhomes or apartments people lose their minds about density. You cannot have low density AND vibrant community AND affordable land. Pick two.
Hard disagree with the premise here. The data center industry basically subsidizes your Amazon Prime, your Netflix, your Zoom calls, your cloud storage. The internet has to live somewhere physically. Why NOT here where the fiber infrastructure already exists? You want them to build this stuff in someone else's backyard instead? That's not a principled position, that's just NIMBYism dressed up in civic language.
My brother-in-law works at one of the QTS facilities off Quaker Lane and honestly the job is pretty good - good benefits, solid pay, not too many people know about these careers. So I push back a little on the "zero jobs" thing people keep saying. That said... one facility, yeah maybe 40-50 employees. Compare that to what a retail or mixed commercial development would bring in terms of actual foot traffic, restaurants, small businesses. The math still doesnt really work for the community does it
ok so i just moved here from northern NJ like eight months ago and even i noticed this immediately. my realtor kept calling it "the technology corridor" like that was supposed to make me feel good about living next to a giant humming box. nobody warned me about the substations and the constant low-frequency noise near some of these facilities. i thought something was wrong with my house for two weeks before my neighbor explained it lol
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