Henrico Planning Commission to weigh Sandston data center proposal April 11
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A developer’s plans to rezone 622 acres in Eastern Henrico for a complex that ultimately could house more than a dozen data centers will be considered by the Henrico Planning Commission at its April 11 meeting, which begins at 6 p.m.
Richmond developer Hourigan wants to rezone the site, located generally at the southeast corner of the I-64/I-295 interchange in Sandston, from an agricultural to a light industrial designation to allow the construction of data centers, advanced manufacturing facilities, office space and other related uses.
The proposal has been deferred three times this year at the developer’s request to allow it time to address input from county planners and residents. Once the commission has voted on the case, it will advance to the Henrico Board of Supervisors, which holds ultimate decision-making authority.
Late last month, in an updated review of the case, Henrico planners recommended its approval, concluding that Hourigan had addressed most concerns and that its revised plans “have addressed the major concerns previously noted by staff and would be in keeping with development standards and best practices for other facilities elsewhere in Virginia.”
Hourigan is terming the proposed development White Oak Technology Park 2, a nod to the adjacent 2,278-acre White Oak Technology Park that’s already home to massive QTS and Facebook/Meta data centers, among other tenants. In its most recent proffers (voluntary development standards), Hourigan committed to stricter noise standards for the site; limited Sunday construction hours and limited generator testing hours; and third-party certification of building energy requirements that it has pledged the development will meet.
It also committed to joining the White Oak Techology Park, making it subject to the same architecture, building materials, signage, setback requirements, external lighting requirements and height restrictions (among other standards) as buildings in the existing WOTP.
Hourigan's proposal has earned criticism from the Henrico Conservation Action Network and some local residents, who are urging county officials to pause their consideration of the case and any others that involve data centers until the impacts of such facilities can be studied more in depth. Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission is in the midst of such a study, which may be completed by the end of the year.
Several bills in the General Assembly that would have required data centers to meet certain energy efficiency standards in order to be eligible for a sales and use tax exemption for data center purchases were continued until next year, in part to allow the JLARC study to be completed first.
Data centers have come under increased scrutiny recently – especially in Virginia, which is home to more than one-third of all known large “hyperscale” data centers in the world (most of which are located in Northern Virginia).
Henrico officials have been attempting to attract more data center users to the county and the White Oak Technology Park, which contains the Richmond Network Access point, or NAP, at the QTS facility – the only spot in the world in which four subsea cables, terrestrial networks, and data center management meet. Henrico slashed its data center equipment tax rate from $3.50 to 40 cents per $100 of assessed value in 2017 as a way to help lure data centers.
Some residents opposed to the plans are concerned that Hourigan has not proffered what they consider to be specific standards related to energy, water or carbon use.
Instead, the company’s proffers promise that any data centers on the site “will be consistent with generally recognized industry energy efficiency standards and guidelines for data centers (i.e. ASHRAE Standard 90.4), to the extent commercially practicable.”
ASHRAE Standard 90.4 is a 2016 standard adopted by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers to encourage more energy-efficient data center designs.
Hourigan also proffered that all data centers on the site will be built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) “Silver” standards for construction or a “recognized industry equivalent such as EnergyStar.”
In addition, the company proffered that data center projects on the site would use at least 50% of solar power for aeration of stormwater management facilities; use stormwater runoff from the site to irrigate landscaping, lawn or buffer areas; and incorporate heat-reflective roofing on at least 60% of data center roofs.
Henrico planners have examined a 34-page report about data centers produced in January by Fairfax County’s Department of Planning and Development, which resulted from that Northern Virginia county’s board of supervisors concluding last May that data centers are “an evolving industry that merits further research and analysis.”
In their initial report, those planners concluded that Hourigan’s proposal would be “largely consistent” with the recommendations of the Fairfax report and with another set of data center standards recently created and approved by Fauquier County in Northern Virginia.
But in an April 9 email to Henrico supervisors and planning commissioners, University of Richmond Associate Professor of Geography, Environment and Sustainability Mary Finley-Brook wrote that Hourigan’s proposal could be more specific.
“While the proffers created for this project may establish some minimal protection in a few areas of public concern, these current agreements do not represent best practices,” she wrote. “In general, there needs to be clearer accountability and stronger procedures to assure compliance, given there is a sector wide trend of greenwashing (i.e., advertising green goals but not following through in a timely manner with concrete action steps). Many data center developers and operators have not demonstrated the trustworthiness that staff suggests exists in this sector.”