PARSONS BUSINESS PARK LLC data center, Manassas, Virginia

Amazon Web Services owns the former Parsons Farm on Dumfries Road (Va. 234) in the Independent Hill area of Prince William County, Virginia, after buying the land for $218 million in April 2024, a month after county supervisors voted to allow data center buildings up to 85 feet tall there. The Parsons Business Park LLC data center site, about 90 acres between Dumfries Road and the county landfill, sits in the county's data center opportunity zone overlay district, where data centers are allowed by right.

A conceptual sketch filed with an early zoning application showed commercial buildings along Dumfries Road and four data center buildings at the rear, which could add roughly 800,000 square feet of data space. The land was rezoned in 2019 for a mix of commercial uses, including data centers up to 45 feet tall. The price came to about $2.4 million an acre, against a county assessment of $25.7 million before the height change.

The height change passed 5-1 on March 19, 2024, over the Planning Commission's recommendation to deny it and objections from about a dozen neighbors. Residents had negotiated the 45-foot limit in 2019 and feared noise, security lighting glare and the view of concrete walls from their homes. "When the data center opportunity zone overlay district was created, it was not designed with the intent to build the tallest possible data centers maximizing all the available acreage into a concrete landscape. But that is exactly what it has become," said Rachel Ellis of Gainesville. At the hearing, the owner's lawyer, Mark Looney, said he did not know whether data centers would be built, saying the end use would be up to the new owner. Supervisor Yesli Vega, whose Coles District includes the site, voted yes, saying the application "checks all of the boxes"; Supervisor Bob Weir voted no, citing the stressed power grid. "Because they're always coming back for more and more and more and more and more," Weir said of developers.

Further south on Dumfries Road, the proposed Mid-County Industrial Park planned three 95-foot data center buildings and a substation about 75 feet from homes in the Potomac Reserve subdivision.

The rules around the site may change. Prince William supervisors are working on a zoning text amendment that would substantially shrink the data center overlay district and end by-right data center development, so that every new data center would need a special use permit from the Board of County Supervisors. Data centers already built or under construction, and those with a site plan past the county's quality control threshold, would stay in the overlay. On September 22, 2026, the Board of County Supervisors approved the amendment 8-0, ending by-right data center development countywide, with a 90-day grace period. A motion by Gainesville Supervisor George Stewart for no grace period, to head off what he called a "gold rush" of data center proposals, failed 3-5. County planners aim to bring a proposed setback from homes and schools to the Planning Commission in November, with a board hearing targeted for January.