Carmel Church Data Hub data center, Ruther Glen, Virginia

The Carmel Church Data Hub, a data center planned for about 97 acres of the Carmel Church Station property next to Interstate 95 at Ruther Glen, in Caroline County, Virginia, won approval from the Caroline County Board of Supervisors in May 2024. The applicant, ADP Carmel Church Data Hub, LLC, asked to amend the proffers on land already zoned for planned mixed-use development under a 2009 rezoning so a data center could be built there in phases. The county planning commission had recommended approval.

The 97 acres are part of a 253-acre parcel bounded on the east by I-95 and on the south by the CSX rail line, reached by Rogers Clark Boulevard, Route 207. The land is owned by Litt Thompson of Thompson Family Office, a Richmond investment firm, and was once meant for the DC South smart city and train station, approved in 2010 but never built. No size in megawatts, end user or construction date for the data center has been reported.

The Carmel Church approval came weeks before the same supervisors voted 5-1 to reject a second Thompson-linked project, a 900-acre data center campus proposed by VALCO off Jericho Road along the North Anna River that residents had fought since January 2023. “I call it the zombie project,” said Ruther Glen resident Kevin Collins, “because it keeps popping up out of the grave on us.” Supervisors said there was plenty of land already zoned industrial, and county Planning Director Leon Hughes counted 1,848 undeveloped industrial acres east of the interstate in the Carmel Church Growth Area. Supervisor Clay Forehand, now the board's chair and a supporter of data centers, has argued that a single campus would bring as much tax as eight to 10 million-square-foot distribution centers without their truck traffic.

By July 2025 the county had approved two data centers, one near the Spotsylvania line in Woodford and the one in Carmel Church, and three more by-right projects had site plans awaiting approval. That month the planning commission voted 4-2 to recommend denial of the Ladysmith Data Hub, a 140-acre campus off U.S. 1 from ADP Ladysmith Data Hub, LLC, after residents objected. The county's list of pending cases also includes the Thornberry Data Center Campus, a request to rezone 657 acres, and a Bull Church Road data center near the Ladysmith interchange.

In September 2026 the supervisors voted 4-2 to rezone 916 acres near Carmel Church for Luck Stone's Carmel Technology and Enterprise Center, an industrial park with no end user named that the planning commission had recommended against. “We need to step back and ask a very basic question: ‘Does this project belong here?’” Collins told the board.

No site plan approval or construction for the Carmel Church Data Hub has been reported; July 2025 reporting counted it as one of the county's two approved data centers, and any further approvals rest with Caroline County.