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The Prince William Board of County Supervisors on Tuesday formally withdrew from appeals of the PW Digital Gateway lawsuit after spending $1.72 million in taxpayer funds to defend legal challenges to the controversial data center project.
In a unanimous vote after a closed session, the board opted to remove the county from the appeals.
The board narrowly approved the Digital Gateway rezoning on Dec. 13, 2023, under then-Chair Ann Wheeler, a Democrat and data center proponent, following a marathon 27-hour public hearing.
Chair Deshundra Jefferson, also a Democrat, succeeded Wheeler in January 2024 and presented a contrasting viewpoint as a data center critic.
The PW Digital Gateway was again halted in a unanimous March 31 Virginia Court of Appeals ruling that consolidated the two major legal challenges to the project – with the Oak Valley Homeowners Association and American Battlefield Trust as chief plaintiffs, respectively.
Issues of improper public notice were front and center at a Feb. 24 Court of Appeals hearing on the Digital Gateway matter.
Developer-defendants Compass and QTS can still appeal the ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court, but the county itself will not appeal.
At full buildout, the Digital Gateway near Gainesville would be the largest data center corridor in the world, with over 22 million square feet of data centers spread out across over 2,100 acres in western Prince William. The project would include 37 data centers, roughly the size of 144 Walmart supercenters.
According to Neabsco District Supervisor Victor Angry, the county may still respond to pleading orders or any other requests made by the Virginia Supreme Court or the Virginia Court of Appeals despite no longer actively appealing.
In a statement, the Coalition to Protect Prince William County lauded the vote.
“Never before has such a small group of people made such a difference to their community and to their state than Prince William County residents,” the statement read. “The Oak Valley lawsuit plaintiffs withstood the onslaught of the storm that QTS and Compass brought to their front door. They were able to bend and never break. The American Battlefield Trust and the four remaining citizen plaintiffs in the parallel lawsuit never gave up and are a testament to their love of their community.”
“The Coalition to Protect Prince William County is forever grateful to the residents and to this board for stepping through the door that we worked so hard to open,” the statement added.
The Oak Valley Homeowners Association opined that the case entailed a universal impact.
“This case has never been just about Oak Valley,” a news release stated. “The real victims were the citizens of Prince William County, who would have suffered – each in varying degrees – from the unchecked and predatory expansion efforts of a multi-billion-dollar global data center industry. The residents of Oak Valley, along with our neighboring communities, are deeply grateful that the County will no longer expend taxpayer funds to fight against its own citizens. This litigation should never have happened.”
Mac Haddow, the association’s president, spoke to the efforts of Wheeler’s lame-duck board in the final weeks of 2023.
“The truth is, it is the taxpayers of Prince William County [who] were compelled to accept the financial risks for proceeding with a flawed rezoning hearing,” Haddow said in the release. “The obvious solution was to just readvertise the hearing, but with then defeated Ann Wheeler headed out the door, the County Attorney appears to have followed the data center operators in proceeding.”
Concurrently, the American Battlefield Trust praised the board’s vote for its protection of Manassas National Battlefield Park.
The park was the site of the Battles of First and Second Manassas – which resulted in nearly 27,000 casualties combined during the American Civil War, according to a release from the trust.
“Today, the Board listened to what their constituents, numerous judges, and we have said for years: the rezonings for the Prince William Digital Gateway mega-development were not only detrimental for Prince William County, but illegal,” said David Duncan, the trust’s president, in the release. “We are incredibly grateful the board arrived at this conclusion, and hope this signals the end for this nightmarish threat to the hallowed ground of Manassas.”
