Project dossier · Warrenton (Fauquier County), Virginia

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.

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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.

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 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

Other tracked projects in Virginia

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).

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