The Second Significant Virginia Data Center Initiative Fails. 4 Minutes Read. The proposal for the Dulles South Innovation Center, a massive data center in Virginia, has been halted by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
The decision came after a vote of 8-2523 on Tuesday, preventing the initiation of Comprehensive Plan Amendment CPA2026-00012. This occurred just days after Data Center Knowledge reported that QTS had withdrawn its appeals in the Digital Gateway case. The proposed campus would have been 43 million square feet in size.
The pulling out of QTS terminated aspirations for a campus which could have attracted up to $30 billion in private funding and as much as 27 million square feet of constructions in Prince William County. When considering the series of failures, it appears that local organizations are now on par with power, fiber, and land in terms of influencing the transition of major AI infrastructure projects from the planning phase to actual construction.
Currently, the county’s online case file does verify the existence of a staff report for CPA2026-00012, but it has not been uploaded to the case page for public viewing. Before the Board hearing, county planning staff advised against starting the amendment process. In a previous meeting, the Planning Commission voted 5-1 to suggest denial.
Virginia also approved its first-ever data center power tax. A Wall Meets a Rural Push. Contrary to Digital Gateway that was based on an existing industrial strip west of Manassas, the Dulles South proposal aimed to introduce extensive data center expansion into the agricultural regions of western Prince William County.
