Charles City County defers data center decision amid public outcry

A map of the proposed Roxbury Technology Park site. (Courtesy diodeventures.com)

Charles City County has again deferred a decision on a planned 500-acre data center campus.

The county Board of Supervisors unanimously decided Tuesday to delay voting on the proposed Roxbury Technology Park, after previously postponing the decision in May. 

Kansas-based Diode Ventures first submitted plans for the park last November and is seeking to rezone around 515 acres about 20 miles due east of Richmond to allow for the campus.

Despite continuous public disapproval, the county planning commission recommended approval of the project at its meeting in May.

The final decision now rests with the supervisors, who saw dozens of concerned Charles City County residents fill the board meeting room Tuesday night to express their displeasure with the project. 

Residents cited concerns including potential environmental impacts, noise and light pollution, the lack of an identified end user and “lack of transparency” from Diode. 

“We should not permit data centers in or near residentially zoned property, full stop. We have plenty of other land, so we should pick that,” said one resident. “Residents are overwhelmingly against this type of project in our community. Please, read the room.”

Some community members from Charles City Citizens First also showed up at the meeting. The group is a recently formed nonprofit made up of county residents opposed to Roxbury Technology Park.

“I am not anti-data center. I believe sound, solid planning is appropriate. You can get data centers in this county if it’s done appropriately,” said a representative from the nonprofit. 

The project site is in an area southwest of the unincorporated community of Roxbury, and comprises five contiguous parcels of private land, which are mainly forested and vacant.

Charles City County’s 2014 Comprehensive Land Use Plan identified the five parcels as part of the Roxbury Development Center, classified as a primary development area within the county since 1979.

On its website, Diode Ventures said the area is ideal for a data center because of “available land, overhead transmission lines, proximity to fiber networks, available workforce, and support of economic development in targeted areas as described in the 2014 Comprehensive Land Use Plan.”

Project costs and how many data center buildings would be on the campus are not yet known, a Diode representative previously confirmed to BizSense.

Representatives from Diode were present at the Tuesday evening meeting, answering some questions and detailing some proffers made as part of the project application. 

Those proffers include things like restricted vehicular access to the site from Charbelee Drive, creating a shared-use path along the CC Road frontage and a 200-foot setback from property lines identified on the general development plan, a change from previous iterations of the project that had 50-foot and 100-foot setback buffers around the site. 

Preston Lloyd of the Williams Mullen law firm is representing Diode. He said at the meeting Tuesday that the application has developed because of “robust public input from the community and from staff.” 

“The application that you have before you this evening is not the application that was submitted. It’s the application that has become the product of many months of engagement, of revision, of concession, in order to try to hear some of the voices that were presented by the community and make sure that those voices have been fully heard and represented,” Lloyd said. 

A larger view of Charles City County. The Roxbury Technology Park site is shown here in blue. (Courtesy diodeventures.com)

Another proffer was that the applicant would not use any groundwater for cooling. 

“They will, if needed, purchase water from Henrico, New Kent or get a permit from DEQ to withdraw water from the James or Chickahominy rivers. A building permit will not be issued until the water issue has been resolved,” said a presentation from county staff at the meeting. 

“We’ll be pursuing what our water solution is. That’s not yet been determined, but it’s going to be a collaborative process with the county to settle that,” Lloyd added.

Lloyd noted in his presentation that 800 to 1,200 construction jobs could be created during the development of the site, and also cited VEDP’s estimate that 83 permanent jobs can be created by the operation of a $1 billion data center. 

Yet the answers were not enough for Charles City County residents, who continued to urge the board to vote no on the project, arguing that not enough information was given about the data center and its potential impacts. 

“Still to this day with this proposal, no source of water identified. It might be the James, it might be the Chickahominy, ‘we might buy water from Henrico.’ They can’t even identify where they’re going to get their water from,” said Charles City Citizens First representative Brandi Marano. “These are just some of our concerns.” 

“Please listen to the residents, please listen to us,” said another resident. “Don’t destroy our lifestyle.”  

After some questioning by the supervisors, board member Michael Hill ultimately proposed a deferral of the decision.

“I would like for us to take additional time to gather more information and details, because we do hear your concerns,” Hill said, addressing county residents. 

The next Charles City County Board of Supervisors meeting is scheduled for July 22. 

Diode Ventures was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Diode is a subsidiary of engineering and construction company Black & Veatch. Diode has worked on data center developments in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kuna, Idaho. 

Charles City County isn’t the only Richmond-area locality grappling with data centers as of late. In Chesterfield, Denver-based developer Tract’s proposed 700-acre data center just outside Colonial Heights failed to get a recommendation of approval from the county planning commission last week.

Henrico County’s Board of Supervisors recently approved revised rules that put further restrictions on data centers, no longer allowing such projects as a by-right use.

Chesterfield is considering a framework similar to Henrico’s, however in the meantime, Chesterfield’s board of supervisors recently approved rezoning requests by the county EDA to allow the construction of data center projects near Westchester Commons and on land that includes part of the western Upper Magnolia Green site near Moseley.

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