Prince William County's largest data center — so far — rises along I-66

Drivers heading along Interstate 66 near U.S. 29 in Gainesville might have noticed the enormous concrete structure rising from the ground in recent months. It’s the biggest data center building yet in Prince William County and one of the largest in all of Northern Virginia.

The building, owned by NTT Global Data Centers, is a quarter mile long, 180 feet wide and 75 feet tall. It’s the first of four data centers planned for the site, which NTT is calling “The Grove at Gainesville” despite its removal of at least 40 acres of trees.

The first building is the size of five football fields laid end-to-end. When all four data centers are up and operating, the complex will provide about 2 million square feet of floor space for servers and computers that will draw as much power as 150,000 homes.

“Isn’t it a monster? It is enormous,” said one data center manager, who asked that his name not be used. He said he likes to drive out-of-town data center colleagues past the Grove of Gainesville for a look. An NTT spokesperson said the company does not comment on real estate projects.

A data center is a warehouse filled with computer servers that store electronic data and provide the processing power that makes up the backbone of the internet.

While at least two data centers in Loudoun County are bigger, and not all data centers in Prince William will be as huge, the complex points to where data center construction is heading: bigger buildings demanding more power.

“Everybody's going for the max,” said Supervisor Bob Weir, a Republican who represents the Gainesville District where The Grove at Gainesville and several other data center developments are under construction. “Almost every application that has come in the door recently is asking for an increase” in height and size, he said.

Plus, there are more of them.

Across John Marshall Highway from NTT is the controversial Village Place Technology Park, whose four buildings, located directly behind a townhome neighborhood, have sparked outrage among area residents. Its four buildings comprise 1.1 million square feet, which is about half the size of the Grove of Gainesville.

Also, nearby is the Hillwood Camping Park, where developer Chuck Kuhn is asking to rezone 82 acres for new data centers. Next door to NTT is land slated for the John Marshall Commons Technology Park, where more data centers are proposed. If all are approved, the projects would add another “data center alley” between Gainesville and Haymarket.

Artificial intelligence drives need for larger data centers

A data explosion, partly driven by artificial intelligence, is driving demand for data centers. Experts estimate the emergence of artificial intelligence will triple the need for data storage in the next decade. Anticipating that need, data center developers are looking for more land in suburbs and rural areas and building bigger on their existing properties.

"You’re seeing this quicker pace and broader geography, but you’re also seeing very large buildings," Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, told The Business Journals earlier this month.

Meanwhile, properties that were once considered viable for retail or other commercial buildings have been turned into data centers. The Parsons Business Park, a former landscaping outlet in the mid-county area, is an example. When first proposed in 2019, its plans called for a row of commercial buildings along Dumfries Road with four possible data centers in the rear.

By the time the project reached the Prince William Board of County Supervisors last March, the developer was seeking permission for 85-foot-tall buildings, which would allow for three-story data centers. A month later, the property sold for $218 million to Amazon Web Services. 

NTT’s Grove at Gainesville followed a similar path. For years, the 102-acre site had been contemplated as a shopping mall. In 2021, its owner, Lerner Enterprises, sought a rezoning and changes to its development restrictions. The company said if it built traffic-heavy restaurants, banks and stores, it would limit development to 1.1 million square feet. If used for data centers, Lerner asked for up to 2.9 million square feet.

The landowner also asked to boost the floor area ratio so the building floor space could equal 65% of the lot’s square footage.

In December 2021, the supervisors approved the project. The county had yet to experience its battles over rampant data center growth, and the application was not heavily scrutinized.

For instance, concern over data center noise did not begin until the spring of 2022, when residents of Great Oak subdivision south of Manassas began to complain of the screeches and hums from the Amazon data centers next door. As a result, all data center proposals now contain promises to stay within county’s noise limits, but the Grove at Gainesville proposal did not mention noise or sound.

Six months later, Lerner Enterprises sold the property to NTT for $257 million, about $2.5 million an acre. In October 2023, NTT released plans for the property to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates a small creek and wetland that runs through the property. The plans show three buildings of similar size, each with 550,000 square feet, and a fourth one slightly smaller.

A rendering shows four buildings of about 550,000 square feet are planned for the Grove of Gainesville, which is now home to the largest data center in Prince William County. The first building is five football fields long and is more than double the size of most data centers. NTT Global Data Centers.

Weir has lobbied his fellow supervisors to limit the size and number of data centers in the county, which already has more than 50 operating data centers and is on track to become the data center capital of the world.

One striking feature of Grove at Gainesville is how much of the land is taken up with buildings, electrical substations and pads for emergency diesel-powered generators, which will number more than 50 for each of the four buildings.

“You increase the (floor area ratio), you increase the amount of power required because you're increasing the square footage,” Weir said. “It’s that simple.”