Amazon Warrenton (Blackwell Road) Approved
220,000 sq ft data center on a 42-acre parcel at Blackwell Road and Lee Highway bought by AWS in Sep 2021 for about $40M; roughly $550M investment. Special use permit approved 4-3 by the Town Council in Feb 2023 after an application filed Apr 2022 and sustained opposition; town staff approved the site development plan in Apr 2024 on its fourth review, with 27 conditions.
Key facts
- Operator
- Amazon (AWS)
- Owner
- Amazon Web Services, Inc.
- Tenant
- Amazon (AWS)
- Filing LLC
- Amazon Data Services
- Size
- 42 ac
- Location
- Warrenton (Fauquier County), Virginia
- First proposed
- 2022-04-01
- Decided
- 2023-02-01
- Stage today
- Approved
Source
read 2026-09-05
What to do next
Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.
What has happened so far (3 events)
- 2022-04-01filing
Amazon Data Services filed its special use permit application with the Town of Warrenton in April 2022. · source - 2023-02-01vote
Warrenton Town Council approved the special use permit 4-3 in February 2023 for a 220,000 sq ft data center at Blackwell Road and Lee Highway, ending the public approval process despite opposition. · source - 2024-04-01permit
Town staff approved the site development plan for the 220,000 sq ft campus on the 42-acre plot after a fourth review, with 27 conditions and requirements (April 2024). · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)
Permits already on file (1)
Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.
- 2024-04-01
Town staff approved the site development plan for the 220,000 sq ft campus on the 42-acre plot after a fourth review, with 27 conditions and requirements (April 2024). · source
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.
- Search Warrenton (Fauquier County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Warrenton (Fauquier County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
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.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Virginia State Corporation Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
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 38.720, -77.780 — 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.
Around here
- Virginia briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Virginia
- Dulles Cloud South — Prince William County, 11 mi Denied
- PW Digital Gateway — Prince William County, 12 mi Withdrawn
- Google Bristow — Bristow (Prince William County), 13 mi
- STACK Infrastructure NVA02 — Manassas, 17 mi Under construction
- Red Ace data center campus (Keyser Road) — Culpeper County, 19 mi Approved
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Amazon Warrenton (Blackwell Road)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/amazon-warrenton-blackwell-road-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).