Fairfax County’s new rules for data centers, explained

The Board of Supervisors passed its zoning amendment after months of charged hearings and debate

(Ryan Bacic/The Machine)

Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors approved new zoning rules this week that will guide the development of its data centers, after four final hours of public testimony, a fraught postponement in July, and months of staff study and polarized public debate.

It was a discussion that folded in questions of noise, the environment, the county’s cost of living and the electrical grid. Whichever way it ended, advocates on all sides seemed to agree, the result would shape Fairfax’s future and its leaders’ legacy.

Jeffrey C. McKay (D), the board’s chair, emphasized at Tuesday’s hearing that he had initiated the process “because we were concerned about what was happening around us, and we wanted to get ahead of the problem.” Residents throughout invoked Loudoun’s data-center boom, casting it alternately as a tax-dollars gold rush to emulate or as an out-of-control problem.

The final zoning amendment, which passed by an 8-2 vote, landed at neither end. (“In my eyes, it balances,” Vice Chair Kathy Smith said.) It introduces a smattering of new restrictions for developers without forcing a public review for each new data-center proposal.

“I don’t expect many people to leave here today feeling like they won,” McKay said. “But Fairfax County won, because we came up with a new Zoning Ordinance, new language that [is] a quantum leap forward.”

Here’s what’s in it and what it means.

What do the new data-center rules do?

The Zoning Ordinance amendment updates the county’s rules around data centers’ construction in several notable ways:

• Requiring new data centers to be at least 200 feet from residential lots and at least a mile from any Metro station entrance.

• Subjecting all new projects to a noise study before and after construction, to ensure they comply with the county’s Noise Ordinance.

• Enforcing design standards to make data centers less of an aesthetic blight. New ones will have to have a “main entrance feature,” “variation in façade surface every 150 feet” and “a minimum amount of fenestration design features” (like fake windows).

• Limiting the size of data centers in lighter industrial districts, unless the developer obtains a special exception.

• Requiring data centers’ equipment to be enclosed or screened, to lessen the noise and visual impacts further.

The board opted for the mile-from-Metro requirement over the original half-mile that staff had recommended in a report in May. McKay called that rule “the most significant setback that exists anywhere in our Zoning Ordinance.”

A contentious subplot of the debate concerned what to do with data-center proposals that had been submitted but not yet approved, like the Plaza 500 proposal on the Alexandria border. Supervisor Walter Alcorn (D-Hunter Mill) proposed a motion Tuesday that would have made those developers comply with the new rules, but the motion failed.

“Despite the fact that I have no sympathy for data-center developers, I do think we’ve got to treat everyone fairly,” Supervisor James Walkinshaw (D-Braddock) said in voting against it. “And I think to change the rules in the middle of the process would not be doing that.”

[What’s your experience with data centers? What do you want to know? Tell The Machine.]

Why did some residents want tougher restrictions?

Some local advocates said the amendment would do little to rein in data center construction and safeguard their communities and the environment.

Cynthia Shang, a local advocate who formed the group Save Pleasant Valley and testified again Tuesday, talked with The Machine before the board’s July hearing. She said the concerns she hears most about data centers include:

• Their massive electricity demands, which are booming along with the recent boom in AI.

• Their carbon emissions, their impacts on resource-protected areas and air quality, and the large amounts of water required to cool their generators.

• The around-the-clock noise that data centers can produce. Some Loudoun residents, Shang said, have reported hearing centers’ low hum from miles away.

Advocates like Shang and Tyler Ray, president of the Bren Pointe Homeowners’ Association, on Tuesday pressed supervisors to make all new data-center projects go through special-exception processes, which would mandate community input. But Supervisor Jimmy Bierman (D-Dranesville) noted after public comment that such a process still couldn’t resolve emissions or water concerns.

[‘This is ridiculous’: Clerical error postpones Fairfax data centers vote]

Ray told The Machine that the size of data centers has been another issue, with 70-foot-tall centers “often replacing buildings that are half the height.” And some residents Tuesday voiced worries about data centers’ potential impacts on property values.

It’s also all happening fast: According to an April report from the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), a trade group that represents tech companies, 4.4 million square feet of data centers were under construction in Fairfax as of February. That would more than double the existing inventory, the report said.

Why did some residents want looser restrictions?

The biggest argument among data-center backers — and there were many of them on Tuesday, too — is the tax revenue they can generate, without adding to county traffic like other types of development can. Fairfax’s cost of living came up again and again.

Several speakers lamented their real estate tax increases as well as the prospect of a meals tax, which the county is studying and which the restaurant industry has hammered in recent weeks.

“We are facing a possibility of people being unable to afford living in Fairfax County, and myself, I am getting near to that point, because property-tax-rate increases have driven my rent out of sight,” Springfield resident Ronald Wilcox said in his testimony.

In Loudoun, meanwhile, taxes from data centers have helped keep real estate taxes low. One of its supervisors, Mike Turner (D-Ashburn), said the county expects about $895 million in data center tax revenue in fiscal year 2025, a rapid increase that would represent about 95% of the county’s operating budget.

There’s more to the economic argument, as well. Jobs with data centers, while scarce after the construction phase, also tend to be high-paying. And some outside contractors, like Don Slaiman of the D.C. area’s electricians union, spoke Tuesday about the boon that data-center maintenance has brought their businesses.

Will the new rules discourage new data centers?

All told: probably not. The new regulations add some inconvenience to developers, but they don’t block data-center construction.

The rules are “consistent with what other jurisdictions in NoVa have done, and the demand there hasn’t let up,” Ray told The Machine back in July. “The unique nature of Fairfax County being ‘the center of the internet’ due to the infrastructure makes it uniquely attractive since there isn’t any lag time for data centers.”

Ray said he attended a data-center conference last year, sponsored by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, where developers “were practically salivating at the endless opportunities and growth of data centers.” It’s a colorful description, to be sure, but it does track with how the industry has talked about Fairfax, too.

“Data center investment in Fairfax County continues to grow, as land availability is sufficient to meet current and future demand,” the NVTC’s April report said, three months after the county released its staff report proposing the restrictions. “The demand for data centers in the area is expected to double over the next decade.”

Even some of those who opposed the zoning amendment acknowledged benefits of that demand. In a statement to The Machine, Supervisor Andres Jimenez (D) said his vote against the motion “reflects the ongoing balance between the long-term interests of Fairfax County and addressing the specific concerns of Mason District residents.”

“Data centers are increasingly vital to our economy,” Jimenez wrote, and their “importance to the future growth of Fairfax County cannot be overstated.”