Map of the proposed Dulles South Innovation Center site, Gainesville District. Source: Prince William County Planning Office.

Prince William County's Board of County Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to reject a comprehensive plan amendment that would have cleared the way for the nearly 2,000-acre Dulles South Innovation Center — one of the largest data center proposals the county has ever considered.

The 8-0 vote came after roughly five hours of public comment and marks a rare unanimous rejection for a data center proposal in a county that has spent recent years wrestling with the pace and scale of the industry's growth.

The proposed campus, also known as Dulles Cloud South, would have covered about 43 million square feet of data center space in the Gainesville District along Sanders Lane, near the Loudoun County line. The amendment sought to redesignate roughly 252 parcels — about 1,940 acres — from agricultural and forestry use to a mix of industrial and mixed-use hamlet designations, setting up a future rezoning from agricultural to planned business district. That rezoning never got the chance to move forward once the comprehensive plan amendment failed.

County staff had recommended denial from the outset, pointing out that the property sits outside Prince William's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District — the area the county has designated as appropriate for large-scale data center development.

The path to Tuesday's vote wasn't entirely smooth. About 35 minutes into the meeting, as public comment was set to begin, Gainesville District Supervisor George Stewart raised an objection to how Board Chair Deshundra Jefferson had handled an eleventh-hour request from the applicant, Sanders Lane Assemblage I LLC, to defer the case.

Jefferson had initially indicated she planned to grant the deferral automatically, saying that has been her practice since taking the chair in 2024. Stewart said he had misunderstood her earlier call for objections, prompting the board to take a 10-minute recess to sort out the correct procedure.

Jefferson then put Stewart's objection to a vote. The board rejected the deferral request 7-1, clearing the way for the public hearing to proceed as scheduled. Neabsco District Supervisor Victor Angry cast the only vote in favor of granting the delay.

Jefferson defended her handling of the procedural question, saying she had consulted with County Attorney Michelle Robl and was “in full compliance with everything” while “running a tight ship.” She added that she didn't want to “waste taxpayer money on another frivolous lawsuit” — a pointed reference to the legal fight that followed the county's approval, and later collapse, of the Prince William Digital Gateway project.

Once public comment opened, the hearing drew a broad cross-section of voices. Del. Danica Roem used the moment to renew her call for a statewide moratorium on new data center development.

Other supervisors offered their own read on the board's reasoning. Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega praised the board for finding bipartisan common ground but cautioned against leaning too heavily on any single industry for the county's tax base. Brentsville District Supervisor Tom Gordy called the board “disciplined” for following the county's Comprehensive Plan rather than bending to pressure from either side of the debate.

For residents along Sanders Lane, the outcome carried personal weight. Some landowners under contract with developers stood to receive well above market value for their property, and several said their support for the project reflected a preference for data centers over the traffic and density that new residential development would bring — not necessarily enthusiasm for data centers themselves.

With the comprehensive plan amendment defeated, Dulles South cannot advance to a formal rezoning request in its current form. Locally, the vote is being read as a signal that the board — reshaped since the Digital Gateway's 2023 approval — may be considerably less willing to entertain data center proposals of this scale going forward.

This is a developing story. The Gazette will continue following the data center beat across the Gainesville District and Prince William County.

Prince William wasn't the only Northern Virginia locality pushing back on data center development Tuesday night. The Stafford County Board of Supervisors voted to halt planning on a proposed 99-acre data center, the Potomac Creek Project, over concerns that it would encroach on a 200-year-old cemetery believed to hold the remains of enslaved people.

Stafford Board Chair Deuntay Diggs said the issue was personal. “My mother is in an unmarked grave, so this is very important to me,” Diggs said. “I could not support it if we were going to do anything outside of protecting that.” The board voted 4-3 to defer planning, zoning, and building height decisions until the developer completes an archaeological survey and separately voted 5-2 to give the developer six to eight weeks to complete that investigation.

The concern echoes one closer to home: in 2024, the Prince William County Historical Commission alleged that the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative had cut down trees inside a protected 25-foot buffer zone surrounding two historic African American cemeteries in the county. Taken together, the two episodes point to a growing flashpoint in the region's data center boom — the risk that rapid development poses to unmarked and historically under-protected burial sites.

Between the Stafford vote and Prince William's own rejection of Dulles South, Tuesday marked a rare night of unified pushback against data center expansion across two Northern Virginia jurisdictions at once.

Reporting for this story draws on coverage from InsideNoVa and WTOP News.