Project dossier · Sandston (Henrico County), Virginia

QTS Richmond 1 Operating

Epoch AI estimates ~238 MW.

Key facts

Size
238 MW
Location
Sandston (Henrico County), Virginia
Stage today
Operating

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (13 events)

  • 2010-04-05announcement
    QTS announced plans to convert the former 210-acre Qimonda semiconductor plant in Sandston, VA into a data center campus, having acquired it through bankruptcy court for $12 million; the site included 1.3 million sq ft of buildings and 100 MW of power capacity. · source
  • 2010-11-03operational
    QTS opened the first 50,000 sq ft phase of its Richmond data center two months ahead of schedule, with up to 18 MW of power and an unnamed government agency as its first tenant. · source
  • 2011-03-16financing
    QTS announced it had invested $100 million in converting the former Qimonda site, with renovation about 5% complete and approximately 50 employees on site, projecting growth to 200 employees. · source
  • 2017-05-01operational
    In May 2017, QTS positioned Richmond as a hyperscale cloud campus, citing 110 MW from Dominion Virginia Power, 1.3 million sq ft across three buildings, and Henrico County's data center equipment tax rate reduction to $0.40 per $100 assessed value. · source
  • 2019-11-19filing
    QTS submitted plans to Henrico County for approximately 1.2 million sq ft of new data center space on a 73-acre parcel south of its main campus along Portugee Road, comprising three 330,000 sq ft buildings and one 165,000 sq ft facility. · source
  • 2021-06-07financing
    Blackstone announced it would acquire QTS Realty Trust for $78 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $10 billion including debt assumption, a 21% premium to the June 4 closing price. · source
  • 2022-07-13announcement
    QTS announced it had acquired 200 additional acres at its Richmond Mega Data Center campus for expansion of up to 240 MW across 1.5 million sq ft of new capacity at White Oak Technology Park. · source
  • 2023-12-01financing
    In December 2023, QTS purchased approximately 225 acres of land in Sandston for $18 million in initial transactions assembling the White Oak Technology Park II site. · source
  • 2024-05-01rezoning
    In May 2024, the Henrico County Board of Supervisors approved rezoning of 622 acres on both sides of East Williamsburg Road at Technology Boulevard for data center and manufacturing use, creating White Oak Technology Park II. · source
  • 2024-06-28financing
    QTS completed acquisition of approximately 397 acres from Hourigan LLC for $118.8 million, giving QTS control of all 622 acres of the rezoned White Oak Technology Park II site; Hourigan had purchased the parcels from Atlantic Crossing ($38.05M) and Vienna Finance ($20.5M) the same day. · source
  • 2024-09-01financing
    In September 2024, a QTS-affiliated LLC purchased approximately 98 acres from LL Flooring adjacent to the White Oak campus. · source
  • 2025-01-10rezoning
    Henrico County's new provisional use permit (PUP) requirement for all hyperscale data centers took effect, including in White Oak Technology Park, requiring board-level approval for new facilities that previously could proceed by right in industrial zones. · source
  • 2025-06-10vote
    The Henrico County Board of Supervisors approved new data center regulations including 500-foot tree buffers from residential areas, generator testing limits, mandatory equipment screening, and closed-loop cooling requirements; rules apply retroactively to rezoned projects without final site plan approval. · 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 37.520, -77.330 — 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, “QTS Richmond 1”, aigridwatch.com/projects/qts-richmond-1, 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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