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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 dedicate a 25-acre portion of the site, valued at $65M, to the county for 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.
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