Data center, Gainesville, Virginia

Black Chamber Partners, LLC, a Washington, D.C. private equity firm, paid $160 million in October 2025 for the 38-acre Merrifield Garden Center site at 6895 Wellington Road in Gainesville, Prince William County, Virginia, planning a data center there. The parcel sits inside the county's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, where data centers are allowed without a public hearing, so the project remains at the proposed stage with no vote required or scheduled.

The sale, more than $4.2 million an acre, was a 500 percent premium on the property's 2025 assessed value of $26.5 million and a 6,857 percent premium on the $2.3 million the Warhurst family paid for the land in 2004. Black Chamber also paid $190 million in March 2025 for a 65-acre industrial site nearby in Manassas, and the firm expects the two sites together to produce more than 740 megawatts of power.

Merrifield Garden Center had operated on the site since November 2008, with a 12,000-square-foot store and a 37,000-square-foot greenhouse, and closed December 31, 2025, with some staff moving to its Merrifield and Fairfax locations. Prince William Supervisor Tom Gordy said businesses in the data center zone are "at risk as long as the overlay continues to exist," calling the sale "a perfect example as to why the overlay needs to be removed." State Senator Danica Roem called losing "a garden center, where the business model is about plants and making sure people have greenery in their yards," so another data center could add to rising energy bills, "beyond parody."

Board of Supervisors chair Deshundra Jefferson called Merrifield "unique and beloved," saying the county's local character "is not something we can put a price tag on." Science educator Katherine Conklin said the store drew monarch butterflies every migration season "because the plants and the flowers are available to the insects," and called the habitat loss "definitely a concern."