Amazon Ditches Ashburn Data Center Plan, Shifts To Mixed-Use Vision

Amazon has dropped its plan to build a data center on a site it purchased from George Washington University earlier this year following community pushback and an emerging disagreement with the county over the land use.

The tech giant reached an agreement with Loudoun County to withdraw its plan for the 120-acre Ashburn site and instead rezone it for mixed-use development with a data center prohibition, Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall announced Tuesday evening.

Randall said a “likely disagreement” was becoming apparent about the site’s uses, so she sought meetings with Amazon in September to “reenvision the site for community-serving purposes.”

The shift comes as Loudoun County, a key hub for the world’s internet traffic, is clamping down on data center development. The board is in the process of installing a yearlong legislative pause on data center approvals, with a final vote expected next month. The county ended by right zoning for data centers last year, meaning all new developments have to go through a special exception process. 

Under the agreement, Amazon will sell a 25-acre portion of the site to the county for $65M for development of a new community arts center and indoor sports facility. The remainder would go toward mixed-use, with housing — both market-rate and attainable — as the predominant use. It is also committing $5M to Loudoun County’s housing fund. The county is naming the effort Project Potomac Promise.

“Some of our greatest opportunities arrive in moments of challenge, when we are willing to sit down and have the hard, face-to-face conversations that progress requires,” Randall said in a release. “That is exactly what happened here.” 

Amazon paid $427M for the parcel in February. GW has for more than three decades housed its Virginia Science and Technology Campus at the site, home to the university’s nursing school and labs for engineering, physics and chemistry research. 

The agreement states that Amazon cannot take legal action against the county to carry out data center development at the site.

“Our team moved to seize this opportunity when approached by the University about a sale — but as we heard the community’s pointed concerns about data center development at this particular site, we took them seriously,” Amazon Vice President for Data Center Capacity Delivery Josh Weissman said in Randall’s release. 

“While we see the property’s legal development potential differently than the County does, we concluded that the best outcome for all is to come together on a shared vision for this campus rather than engage in costly litigation.”