Southern Stafford County residents came to a meeting about a proposed data center campus with a few concerns Tuesday night, but the attorney for the business behind the project said it would be better for the area than more homes.
The Blaisdell data center campus would put about 1.5 million square feet of buildings on 181 acres of now-undeveloped, wooded land south of U.S. 17, north of the Rappahannock River and east of Interstate 95 along Olde Forge Drive.
TC Blaisdell Owner, LLC is asking the county to approve the development, which is in the rough vicinity of the historic Gari Melchers Home and Studio (Belmont).
The Stafford Board of Supervisors isn’t likely to make a decision on the project until next year, said Charlie Payne, who represents TC Blaisdell Owner. Rather, Tuesday’s meeting at Stafford’s Early Childhood Education Centers was intended to share information about — and get feedback on — how the project would fit in with its potential neighbors.
The U.S. is the data center capital of the world, said Payne, and that has a lot to do with what consumers do every day.
“If you have an iPhone or an iPad or an electronic device or even your appliances, they use data,” he said. “And all that has to get stored somewhere.”
So data centers keep technology working, Payne said.
“Every business, whether it’s health care, whether it’s our national defense, whether it’s the grid — the electronic grid itself — public utilities, first responders, you name it, every single industry leans on data centers to support their technology infrastructure,” he said.
That means the need for data centers is already here, it isn’t going away and the community might as well benefit from it, Payne said.
The Blaisdell campus is slated for three data centers that would come online between 2028 and 2031. At full buildout, the operation would create about 159 jobs and generate millions of dollars in local tax revenue every year, according to a fiscal impact analysis submitted to the county in December.
Revenue would go from $12.3 million during the first year of operation in 2028 to $35.9 million in 2031 before leveling out in 2037 at $32 million, per the analysis.
According to Payne, the current land-use plan for the area encourages the development of single-family houses. If those were built instead of data centers, they would generate a lot more traffic than the data centers would, about 10 car trips a day.
“And let’s say you had 250 homes,” he said. “That’s 2,500 trips a day, right?”
In addition, part of the land in the project area would be preserved in its natural state, Payne said, and there are plans with historians to honor the memory of Hunter’s Iron Works. The Iron Works supplied the Continental Army and Navy with muskets, swords and other armaments during the Revolutionary War, though none of the buildings survive today.
But what about other issues, such as noise, water use, and proximity to the river and Belmont? They were all brought up Tuesday.
On noise, Payne said the data centers would be subject to the same sound-level restrictions as homes in Stafford.
“I’ve been to one,” Payne said. “It sounds less loud than my air-conditioning outside.”
Another concern is the use of water. Some data centers use water for cooling, but the Blaisdell campus would instead be “air-cooled,” using a system with what are basically really big air-conditioners, the lawyer said. No water would be drawn from the Rappahannock for the project, either.
Also, Payne said, the data centers really wouldn’t be that close to the river (about 1,800 feet away) or to Belmont (3,400 feet away).
Despite his contentions, some in the crowd left the meeting feeling skeptical.
After hearing the presentation, Kari Thompson, who lives nearby on Lendall Lane, said she’s not very excited about the project. She said she understands the potential economic benefits but wonders why it has to be near the Rappahannock.
She also said she’s heard mixed things about the sound of data centers, and until she can actually hear one herself, it’s hard to know the truth.
“I’m glad this is just the beginning, and I think that we’ll get a chance to hopefully get a lot of people involved,” Thompson said.
Rebecca Malin, who works at Belmont, said she lives in the house that would be the closest to the data center campus.
She’s worried about noise, too, as she’s heard that, in Northern Virginia, data centers sound like leaf blowers running constantly, and people have to sleep in their basements to try to escape.
She’s also concerned about the amount of power that data centers require. Who’s going to pay for that? She figures the cost will be split among everyone.
“That’s something that these guys never cover,” Malin said.
Christina Mellors, meanwhile, said she doesn’t like the location of the proposed Blaisdell campus.
“I mean, I don’t see how you can use a computer, or the Internet, and then complain about data centers in general,” she said. “But there’s places for them to be placed, and that’s places that already are heavy industrial.”
