Prince William County, Virginia, has been aggressively courting data center landlords, and it is paying off. Data center projects in the county have now reached a total of 5.2 million square feet.
In recent years, development has brought more than 40 projects to Prince William County, with $9 billion in capital investment, including six data center projects completed in fiscal 2019. According to the county’s Department of Economic Development, that has resulted in more than 1,170 highly skilled jobs and hundreds of construction jobs.
Prince William County recently amended its Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, which has more than 10,000 acres designated for commercial data center development, to allow for larger-sized data centers.
Prince William County is also attractive to data center developers because of its affordable power, connectivity and water capacity.
Recent big projects include Corporate Office Properties Trust’s groundbreaking on data centers at Innovation Park, anchored by George Mason University’s Prince William Campus.
Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in North America and, according to JLL’s Global Data Center Outlook, accounts for 30% of the global data center market share, most of it in Loudoun and Prince William counties.
