Plans are solidifying for another data center facility in the Route 28 corridor just east of Dulles International Airport.
A Fairfax County planner affirmed this month that a proposed data center would be “suitable” for the former Word of Grace Christian Church property at 13832 Redskin Drive in Herndon, and that the facility would be “fully consistent” with local ordinances, according to a letter uploaded to the county’s land use database yesterday (Monday).
Requested to support an air permit application to the state, the determination was finalized after county staff approved a site plan on Nov. 19 for a data center facility with two mid-rise buildings and accompanying improvements, including paved roads, emergency generators, landscaping, storm drains and fencing around the perimeter.
The facility is being developed by an affiliate of the private investment firm Starwood Capital Group, which acquired the nearly 30-acre property from Word of Grace for $25 million in June 2023, property records show.
Once part of a training facility for the Washington Commanders, the site is currently developed with the two-story church building and two football fields.
Given that it’s surrounded by the Renaissance Technology Park, an industrial park that’s already being redeveloped with data centers for Amazon, Starwood contended that the Word of Grace site is also suitable for those facilities in its air permit application, which must be approved by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ):
The facility itself is a Data Center that houses large scale computer equipment to store computer data. The computer data supports various household information (i.e., social value) and business operations (i.e., economic value). Due to the internet, these data centers support social value and economic value for both the local community and potentially the entire country. Based on a review of publicly available maps and satellite photographs, the site is located on land for planned business development; therefore, the facility is suitable for this location.
In a potential complication, the property is less than a mile away from the former King Abdullah Academy campus, which Fairfax County Public Schools hopes to reopen as a new public high school starting in the 2026-2027 school year.
FCPS told the Washington Business Journal earlier this month that it’s “monitoring” the data center project as it moves through the county’s review and permitting processes.
Growing concerns about the impacts of data centers, including when it comes to noise, water and air pollution, and energy demand, led the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to establish new, tighter regulations on the developments last year. Among other rules, the county now requires a minimum 200-foot setback from any residential properties, though no such limits were imposed for commercial or community uses like a school.
The county similarly focused on creating more distance for residential neighborhoods when updating its regulations for electrical substations, which have also started proliferating to keep up with mounting energy needs driven, in part, by data centers.
According to the air permit application submitted to DEQ by Atlas Technical Consultants on Nov. 14, the Word of Grace Data Center will consist of one two-story, 60-megawatt data center labeled Building E and a two-story, 32-megawatt data center designated as Building F.
Building E will be approximately 406,000 square feet in size and is slated for construction first at 2860 Towerview Road, the application suggests. Building F would follow at 2850 Towerview Road.
To support the facility, Starwood is looking to install 62 electric generator engines, including two emergency sets that could generate 1.5 megawatts of electrical power and 60 with a capacity for 3.1 megawatts.
“The generator engines will be used to supply power to the facility when electrical power from the utility grid is unavailable,” the application says. “The proposed generator engines will also be fired periodically for short periods of time as part of a maintenance testing program.”
According to the application, the facility will limit scheduled maintenance and readiness tests of the generators to 25 hours per year, restricting fuel usage and, by extension, the pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions the engines produce.
Construction and map images via Google Maps
