Plans for an 800MW data center campus in Fauquier County, Virginia, have been dropped following local pushback – but the company behind the project plans to return with scaled-down ambitions for the site.

FauquierNow reports the developers of the proposed Gigaland data center campus in Remington officially withdrew their application last week.

Adam Shellenberger, Fauquier County assistant director of community development, confirmed the news to the publication.

However, the developers are likely to submit a new application with proposals for a smaller campus, which must go through the full review process again.

“We do anticipate that a new application will be filed in the future; however, we do not know the timeline or what components will be included,” Shellenberger said.

Gigaland bought the 202 acres of land for $4 million in October 2023. The company was seeking to rezone 202-acres from residential use to ‘Business Park’ for an 800MW, 2.2 million sq ft (204,386 sqm) data center campus known as Gigaland.

The Fauquier County planning commission voted to recommend denial of a land rezoning proposal on June 18. The project was due to come before the county board of supervisors later this month.

GigaLand LLC told FN it was now working on a scaled-down plan, with reductions in square footage, number of substations, and building height. The scaled-down plan would reduce the campus size to 847,400 sq ft (78,725 sqm) – reducing the planned buildings to one-story and halving the number of substations to two.

Gigaland co-founder Art Lickunas said the revisions were shaped by input from county staff, opposition groups, and the project’s end user. He confirmed the site would serve both hyperscalers and retail colocation: “The plan is to split the site into two halves. One is more retail-oriented, and the other will be more hyperscale operations.”

Gigaland declined to confirm the project’s end user, but Shellenberger told FN that representatives from Equinix participated in meetings with county officials and project developers and that it was “assumed that Equinix was to be the end user had the applications been approved.”

Opposition group the Piedmont Environmental Council called the withdrawal a “victory and a testament to the power of civic engagement.”

“The developers’ decision to withdraw the application is a direct result of the strong community opposition that made it clear they did not have the support needed for a 'yes' vote from the board,” the council said. “We remain deeply concerned about the impacts of data centers on our county and region. While a scaled-down proposal may address some concerns, the fundamental issues with data centers — impacts on our communities and our air, water, land, and historic resources — remain.”

In an open letter on Gigaland’s website, Lickunas said: “Early on, we were told by several members from opposition groups—Protect Fauquier, Citizens for Fauquier County (CFFC), and the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC)—that they would not oppose the project if the Meadows community, which is located closest to the site, did not object. We took that to heart.”

He noted, however, of a ‘narrative shift’: “It’s no longer about the Meadows, Remington, or the Lee District—it is now being called a “countywide issue.” While we would love to meet with every household in Fauquier County, that simply isn’t possible.”