Project dossier · Ashburn (Loudoun County), Virginia

Amazon Bridgefield Tech Center (GW campus, Ashburn) In review

Four data center buildings (about 800,000 sq ft per WTOP; Northern Virginia Magazine reports ~400,000 sq ft plus three parking garages) on George Washington University's Virginia Science and Technology campus, filed as a site plan under 1972-era zoning so it would need no Planning Commission review, public hearing or Board vote. The county says data centers are not by-right there and will require special-exception review. Construction cannot start until GW vacates, up to five years. 'rezoning_filed' here is the site-plan filing date.

Key facts

Operator
Amazon (AWS)
Owner
Amazon Data Services
Tenant
Amazon (AWS)
Filing LLC
Amazon Data Services
Size
122 ac
Location
Ashburn (Loudoun County), Virginia
First proposed
2026-03-17
Application filed
2026-07-31
Stage today
In review

Source
read 2026-09-05

What to do next

Next step: Application filed. Ask the planning office for the hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (3 events)

  • 2026-03-17announcement
    Amazon Data Services bought George Washington University's Ashburn campus for $427 million. Economic development director Buddy Rizer: "At no time has the Board of Supervisors envisioned data centers on that property," and the county said any data center there needs special-exception review before the Board of Supervisors, not by-right approval. · source
  • 2026-07-31filing
    Amazon Data Services filed a site plan for four two-story data center buildings and three parking garages on the 122-acre campus. Supervisor Juli Briskman (Algonkian): "Replacing the George Washington University campus with four massive data center buildings would be a profound loss for our community." · source
  • 2026-08-04meeting
    Amazon presented the 'Bridgefield Tech Center' plan (about 800,000 sq ft in four buildings) to residents. The application relies on 1972 zoning to proceed as a site plan with no Planning Commission review, public hearing or Board vote. Briskman called it too close to homes, Bles Park and the Potomac; residents described the area as becoming "a concrete jungle." · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

  • Virginia DEQThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
  • Search Virginia DEQ for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 39.050, -77.460 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Recent news

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 2 headlines archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Virginia

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Amazon Bridgefield Tech Center (GW campus, Ashburn)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/amazon-bridgefield-ashburn-va, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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