The Village Place Data Center Con is Just the Beginning

Friends and Neighbors,

Disasters of the quantity and magnitude of those scarring the landscape in Prince William County could not possibly have happened by accident. 

Consider “Village Place Technology Park”* the absolute horror of which is just now becoming apparent.  Could corporate predators and county officials have found a less appropriate site for a data center development if they had set out to do it? 

As you can see from the diagram below, the site was designed for maximum incompatibility with an adjacent townhome community, two schools, and a fire station.  I guess they couldn’t find a site that also bordered a nursing home and children’s hospital.

The next step in this con job required an astonishing degree of artistic license.  Look at the ponds and the trees in the artist’s conception below!  Do they have any two-bedroom garden apartments available?

When the Planning Commission gave its recommendation for approval on April 21, 2021** (Prince William planners give their approval for data center near Haymarket | Headlines | insidenova.com), then Haymarket Councilman Bob Weir said:

“This application is a clear example of why the data center overlay district was created,” he said. “Enough is enough. Every time one of these comes up, it puts the county residents at risk and their property values at risk.”

A contemporaneous Data Center Dynamics article (Data center campus gets rezoning approval in Prince William County, Virginia - DCD (datacenterdynamics.com)) said about the mysterious owner CTP-I LLC:

“CTP-I LLC is registered through Corporation Services Company, a company that data center organizations often use to obfuscate their involvement in projects.’

As if that wasn’t shady enough, CTP-I LLC is associated with something called “Black Chamber Group”, which executed the attached non-disclosure agreement with Prince William County on August 12, 2021. 

Black Chamber Group also owns the proposed John Marshall Commons Technology Park across the street, immediately adjacent to the Pace West School.

And if that wasn’t sneaky enough, our county’s developer-friendly transparency policy further ensured that residents were completely unaware of the depths of their awful intentions.  Developer dreams = citizen nightmares, and our BOCS is wholly developer-owned.

But let’s not pre-judge since our county planners assured us that everything will be OK.  The staff report for REZ2020-00024 (Staff Report, REZ2020-00024 and SUP2020-0037, Village Place Technology Park (pwcgov.org)) states...

"The project mitigates its impact through the provision of an open space parcel, wide setbacks, landscape buffers, berms, screen walls and proffered architectural elevations."

Below must be the “wide setback” they were talking about. 

Check out the “project mitigation” below.  Are those four-foot trees the “landscape buffers”?  And those “berms” are mighty effective.

A Village Place resident recently posted on Facebook:

 "It falls right in line with where we formerly saw the sunrise. We are selling and I imagine others will shortly. Some investors will probably end up buying up a lot of these homes and turning them into rentals. Gainesville has been sliding for a while now. They’re determined to strip it of all of its charms to make a buck. It’s feeling more and more like just a place to sleep when work ends and less like home."

Do you think they are finished imposing misery on this neighborhood?  Not by a long shot.  The next step is to go into their community and tear up their privately maintained streets to make water and sewer connections. 

The point of which is to quench the thirst of the four data center buildings which will guzzle millions of gallons.  We all recall unsubstantiated BOCS assurances of how efficient these behemoths are.  The table below suggests that was more BOCS baloney. 

This is just one of many  God-awful data center projects coming soon to a neighborhood near you.  The first warning you’ll get is trees falling and bulldozers preparing the lunar landscape. 

See the second attachment for a sneak preview of what your trusted elected officials are planning for you.

Then, get mad.  Get to the polls and send Chief Architect Ann Wheeler and her enablers packing.

Lesson: Never mind what they tell you.  This is what they will do to you.

This article is an opinion piece by Bill Wright, Gainesville resident, activist and contributor. 

This article is an opinion piece, and represents the opinion of its author and not necessarily that of Bristow Beat. 

*Corrections: Village Place, not Village Park Data Center as previously stated in the headline, ** 2021, not 2012 as previously stated, ,***description of mitigations added to the article.