A Chesapeake developer has filed plans to build the first large-scale data center in Hampton Roads.
Longtime developer Doug Fuller said the project is designed to handle computing for artificial intelligence applications and is made possible by tens of millions of dollars of new ultrafast internet infrastructure built by the city and region to lure tech businesses.
But before Fuller’s plans were submitted to the city, opposition to the data center was already fomenting online. It’s the latest in a long-running battle waged by suburban and rural residents against development that continues to inch out into the region’s countryside.
“Why don’t you build it in your neighborhood?” one woman shouted at Fuller during an occasionally heated community meeting organized to discuss tactics to beat back the proposal.
Chesapeake’s planning commission will consider a request to rezone land for the project near Great Bridge at its May 14 meeting.
A report from city staff recommends the project be approved. It says the proposal is consistent with city plans, that “thoughtful consideration has been given to mitigating undesired impacts,” and it will be good for the city’s bottom line.
That’s exactly what Buzz Hartman, a retired trucker and IT professional who lives more than five miles away from the data center, is worried about.
“I think it's the opening the door for a lot of other stuff that I don't know and I don't understand, and it doesn't seem to be that anybody really wants to fess up and say what the big plan is,” he said.
“If an area is not growing, it's dying. But we need to make sure we grow in a manner that does not leave our culture behind.”
“Pieces to the puzzle”
Chesapeake’s suburbs give way to sprawling farmland at the corner of Ethridge Manor Boulevard and Centerville Turnpike. Development is restricted to low-intensity uses around Fentress Airfield, halting the spread of housing developments there decades ago.
Fuller’s property on that corner sat empty for decades, encumbered by a lingering lease by a defunct grocer who planned to develop across the street. But that expired and the city council voted to remove the barriers to development on the parcel last month.
Originally, Fuller was drawing up plans for an industrial office park when he realized tens of millions of dollars of internet infrastructure was set to run past his front door.
Chesapeake has been laying 175 miles of fiber optic internet network, running a circuit around the city to connect municipal facilities like schools, libraries and police precincts.
That will tie into a similar regional network that started after undersea cables connecting other parts of the global internet to America arrived in Virginia Beach a few years ago.
The region’s five southside cities hatched a plan to collaborate on an ultra-high-speed internet network.
The idea: putting those new fiber lines in place should eliminate data bottlenecks caused by older internet infrastructure and draw tech companies who need to move mountains of data quickly.
The partnership, called the Southside Network Authority, is spending $24 million dollars to lay more than 100 miles of fiber optic internet cables.
Marcellus Nixon came on to lead the authority late last year. He said that 100-mile loop will serve as the backbone of the new high-speed network and should be finished next spring after three years of construction.
“It's not just about internet access. It's also about high paying jobs, bringing those to the area, and basically taking a limitation off of any type of economic development opportunity as well,” Nixon said.
Fuller said it was this network, which includes a run down Centerville Turnpike, that triggered the idea of the data center and will make the project possible.
“Data centers are very hard to be able to get all of the pieces to the puzzle in the location they are,” Fuller said.
The site is about 1,200 feet from a Dominion Energy substation and already has utilities running to it.
“What's missing is the half a billion dollar or more data center to support those investments,” Fuller said.
The plan calls for a nearly 350,000 square-foot data center located on 26 acres at that corner between housing developments and farm stands. It would operate around the clock and employ somewhere between 30 and 50 people.
Fuller says his project is on the smaller side of major data centers — giants like Amazon have built centers three times the size and bigger in Northern Virginia — but the Chesapeake center will still be much larger than anything that exists in Hampton Roads.
While Virginia hosts the most data centers in the world and the market is growing rapidly, most of the economic benefit of these data centers comes during the construction phase. Their continued operation can be a cash cow for local governments via taxes, according to one state report.
Fuller said he’s already fielding calls from companies interested in making use of the data center, which he said he’ll continue to own but will be operated by another company.
But before any dirt turns, Fuller needs city rezoning approval.
Neighbors, environmentalists prep pushback
Meg Lemaster moved to the fringe of the Chesapeake suburbs from Virginia Beach a decade ago.
“It's so quiet, it's beautiful, it's rural. That's what we wanted. And our neighborhood is just on the cusp of all the farmland, and that's what we moved here for,” she said.
When she received notice a few weeks ago about the development of the data center across a pond from her home, she started doing research — and rallying her neighbors.
“What they're trying to do is take an agricultural zoned piece of land that's right behind my house and turn it into this monstrosity that we don't want,” Lemaster said.
She put out a call on Facebook and gathered nearly 60 Chesapeake residents in the social hall of Hickory United Methodist Monday night to talk about what’s got them worried and how to stop it.
It’s the latest example of residents of less developed areas of Hampton Roads mobilizing to beat back development of industrial projects. Some have even taken their opposition to the courts or sought to push the issue to a referendum vote over the last couple of years..
The Hickory church hall meeting wasn’t just neighbors saying “not in my backyard.” Residents from elsewhere in the city showed up, as did Tim Cywinski from the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club.
“Reckless development like this is happening all across Virginia, specifically in rural areas. Every time it's proposed, it's done with a lack of transparency and the community raises hell afterwards because they weren't informed,” Cyzwinski told WHRO after the meeting.
Data centers in general have engendered increasing controversy in recent years, primarily over their environmental impact and intense use of electricity.
The power usage of data centers doubled between 2019 and 2023. Projections from the federal Department of Energy say energy demand of data centers could be triple again by 2028.
The state’s largest electric utility, Dominion Energy, revealed last year that power consumption would not grow over the next decade were it not for the proliferation of data centers, driving concerns that as the utility builds more to handle the demand, residential customers will end up footing the bill.
The state of Virginia’s own study also raised a flag on energy concerns.
Late last summer, Fuller and his partner got confirmation from Dominion that they would be able to draw the necessary power from the neighboring substation – up to 200 megawatts, though he said the data center won’t need nearly that much.
Fuller attended the community meeting and stood up to take questions from the crowd halfway through, with exchanges sometimes confrontational. One man called Fuller’s assertion that the center would have an “unlimited supply of water” a “stupid statement.”
Cywinski and Fuller sparred a couple of times as well over what Cywinski called “half-truths” from the developer, including about the center’s power needs.
While some at the church worried about local water supplies or strain on the power grid, the top worry was the noise. Residents near data centers in Northern Virginia have complained the constant droning of HVAC systems and cooling fans keep them awake at night. Several in the social hall said they’d signed up for the occasional noise of Navy jets, but not the continuous noise of machinery.
That issue made it all the way to the halls of Virginia’s Capitol.
One bill that received bipartisan support would have required high energy use facilities like data centers to study the sound impacts of their developments and submit that study to the local government before rezoning and permitting. Despite passage by the House and Senate, the bill was vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
To head off concerns about noise, Fuller said he designed the building to position mechanical elements like climate control and generators on the west side of the building, facing farms.
"I don't care how you build the building, brother. That air conditioning system sits on top. We going to hear that," one audience member said.
The developer noted his building would be quieter than the jet noise that rumbles through the area and pointed to multiple noise studies he'd commissioned showing the sound was within the city's noise ordinance.
Residents at the meeting were generally unconvinced, and resolved to show up to future city meetings to oppose the data center.
