After sitting vacant for 17 years, an 87-acre former shopping mall site in Prince George’s County passed a crucial hurdle to launching its second act.

The county’s Planning Board unanimously approved Lerner Enterprises’ proposal Thursday morning to allow 4.1M SF of industrial development on the site, which Lerner is planning for data centers.

“The development helps in diversifying the county’s tax base, and will contribute to the economic mix in the sector plan area,” the Prince George’s County Planning Board report says.

The now-vacant mall site was one of three finalists for the new FBI headquarters. But it lost out to a WMATA-owned site at the Greenbelt Metro station, which was selected in November as the location for the new federal campus.

With that option off the table, Lerner in January filed plans for a data center redevelopment.

The property is zoned for mixed-use under the M-X-T designation and was originally intended for a mix of uses including office, education, hotel, cultural, retail, medium- and- high-density residential, and open space. But in 2021, the county changed the allowed uses for M-X-T zones to include data centers, a change Lerner’s plan hinges on.

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