In a bid to drive forward Point One’s plan to build a massive data center campus in Remington, Virginia, two owners of the land in question have updated a rezoning request and submitted it to the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors, reports The Fauquier Times.
At present, the site is classified as partly Rural Agricultural (RA) and Residential (R-1); it would need to become a Business Park (BP) zone for the data center development to go ahead.
Bartering
The property owners, Robert Springer and Timothy E. Rizer, are hoping to lower the cost of rezoning from $14,730 per residential unit to $3,072, which would only go into effect once 200,000 square feet of data center space were built.
What’s more, they have requested that a cap on the number of residential units that can be rezoned annually, currently set at 33, is increased to 66.
The argument in favor of such a move is that it would decrease the amount of public services that have to be provided to residential properties, while tax revenue would increase as a result of the data center development.
The proposed campus would comprise up to six data centers, each spanning approximately 200,000 square feet (18,580 sq m), at a cost between $1.4bn and $1.6bn. The full build-out of the site is projected to take between five and seven years.
Point One was attracted to the property because of its favorable location and dense fiber optic connectivity, and because it offers access to high voltage electrical supply and has an abundance of available greywater with which to provision the facility.
The site is neighboring a large solar power generation plant and spans more than 200 acres, meaning it could accommodate up to 300MW of electrical load.
The Fauquier County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the matter at its general meeting on March 8th.