Project dossier · Prince William County, Virginia

PW Digital Gateway Withdrawn

Approved in 2023 (4-3-1) but the rezoning was judicially voided over defective hearing notice; county and developer dropped their appeals in 2026, ending the project as approved.

Key facts

Operator
Compass Datacenters / QTS
Size
2,100 ac
Location
Prince William County, Virginia
Decided
2026-04-01
Stage today
Withdrawn

Source
read 2026-08-07

What to do next

Next step: Withdrawn — confirm it is dead in the record and watch for the same site resurfacing under a new name or LLC.

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What has happened so far (12 events)

  • 2022-11-02vote
    Prince William Board of Supervisors voted 5-2 to approve the comprehensive plan amendment (CPA2021-00004) changing roughly 2,100 acres of the rural crescent to technology/flex zoning, after a 14-hour meeting that began the evening of November 1. · source
  • 2023-03-15hearing
    Prince William County Historical Commission voted to recommend designating Pageland Farm (9-3) and Rock Hill Farm (9-4) as county registered historic sites within the proposed Digital Gateway corridor, citing Civil War-era significance including Second Manassas battlefield positions. · source
  • 2023-11-09vote
    Prince William Planning Commission recommended denial of all three rezoning applications (Compass 6-2, both QTS applications 6-2) after a nearly 24-hour public hearing that concluded November 9. · source
  • 2023-12-13vote
    Prince William Board of Supervisors approved the rezoning 4-3-1 after a ~27-hour public hearing - roughly 2,100 acres / 23M sq ft along Pageland Lane, billed as the world's largest data center corridor. · source
  • 2025-08-08ruling
    Prince William Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving declared the December 2023 rezonings void ab initio, ruling the county's advertised hearing notice did not comply with Virginia Code or county ordinance, with defects caused solely by the county. · source
  • 2025-09-11vote
    Board of Supervisors voted 4-2 to approve spending additional taxpayer funds to appeal the circuit court ruling voiding the Digital Gateway rezonings. · source
  • 2025-11-17ruling
    Virginia Court of Appeals ordered that Compass and QTS are barred from land disturbance or construction on the Digital Gateway site pending resolution of the appeal. · source
  • 2026-03-01ruling
    Virginia's Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court ruling voiding the rezoning over defective public-hearing notice (March 2026). · source
  • 2026-04-01filing
    County dropped its legal appeals (~$1.7M spent defending the project) and the developer withdrew, terminating the approved Digital Gateway (April 2026). · source
  • 2026-04-14vote
    Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to abandon its legal defense of the Digital Gateway; the county had spent roughly $1.7 million in taxpayer funds defending the project as of March 31. · source
  • 2026-04-30filing
    QTS filed a last-minute petition for appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court hours before the 11:59 p.m. deadline, becoming the sole remaining party seeking to revive the project after Compass Datacenters dropped its appeal on April 28. · source
  • 2026-07-02withdrawal
    QTS affiliate GW Acquisition Co. withdrew its Virginia Supreme Court petition, officially ending the Digital Gateway project; QTS stated it decided 'after careful consideration' to terminate and proceed with a responsible wind-down. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 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 38.720, -77.550 — 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

14 stories tracked since 2026-04-08 across 9 outlets. 11× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. 2× Water use for cooling is straining the local supply. Most recent: “Northern Virginia's Prince William County puts controls on new data center projects” (Data Center Dynamics, 2026-09-25).

+2 more on the story tracker.

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 14 headlines archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Virginia

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “PW Digital Gateway”, aigridwatch.com/projects/pw-digital-gateway-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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