Forest Lane Data Center, Fredericksburg, Virginia

The Forest Lane Data Center, a plan to rezone 845 acres at the northeast corner of Kings Highway (Route 3) and Forest Lane near Fredericksburg in Stafford County, Virginia, for data centers, is still under county staff review. The applicant, Real Estate Pursuits 2 LC, is affiliated with the developer Peterson Companies and wants the land moved from agricultural and light industrial zoning to heavy industrial, with a conditional use permit for an electrical substation.

When it was filed in the summer of 2025, it was the 16th active data center application in Stafford's pipeline, and little was known about the applicant. Army Corps of Engineers filings later tied Real Estate Pursuits 2 to Peterson, whose address and email addresses appear in the documents.

The same affiliate has filed for Project Sisson nearby, off Kings Highway around Albion Lane on the banks of the Rappahannock River: 16 two-story buildings totaling 3.8 million square feet with four substations, cooled with water from the Little Falls Wastewater Treatment Plant. Peterson earlier developed the Stafford Technology Campus in Falmouth, since taken over by Stack.

At the Board of Supervisors on June 2, 2026, residents raised air pollution and health. Washington District resident J.W. Swain, citing plans for about 11 million square feet of data centers along the Kings Highway assemblage, said: "I calculated based on tier 4 generators, which are the best you can get, 37,000 pounds of PM 2.5 and PM 10 material." He said schools lie 1.5 to 2 miles away and a park about 1,000 yards away.

He added that state regulators cannot deny permits on the concentration of pollution sources alone: "You are the last stand for health, our health concerns." Kevin French, a George Washington District resident and former technology executive, urged supervisors to hire outside legal, financial and technical experts given the scale of the proposals; supervisors did not respond directly to the comments.

Stafford is carrying roughly 18 data center proposals totaling tens of millions of square feet. In April 2026, county planning staff recommended deferring the Potomac Creek Campus off Eskimo Hill Road, where a cemetery holds the graves of 18 or more enslaved people, and denying the Accokeek Center near U.S. 1 as incompatible with nearby homes.

At a League of Women Voters forum in September 2026, a University of Mary Washington professor described the Stafford Technology Center, being built near Eskimo Hill Road, as one of five data center projects Stafford has already cleared, and the group Protect Stafford is organizing residents.

The rezoning needs public hearings before both the Stafford County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, which makes the final decision. The Board of Supervisors adopted tighter data center rules in December 2025, Ordinance O25-29(R), after setback, buffer and noise recommendations from the Planning Commission. No hearing date has been set for Forest Lane; as of June 2026 the application remained under county staff review.