QTS Richmond 3 data center, Sandston, Virginia

QTS Richmond 3 is a 221-acre data center campus on Portugee Road in Sandston, Henrico County, Virginia, the newest of QTS's three campuses there, master planned for five buildings at 3525 through 3543 Portugee Road. QTS says the campus is planned for 240 megawatts of power once complete; in 2022 the company announced the project after buying another 200 acres at the site, Data Center Dynamics reported.

About a mile north, QTS is also building its RIC5 campus, up to seven data center buildings on 622 acres straddling Williamsburg Road; QTS bought roughly 397 acres of that land for $118.8 million in 2024. QTS has asked the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to permit 370 more diesel emergency generators at its Henrico campuses, on top of 544 generators and 11 cooling towers already permitted; the company says these systems "are for emergency back-up purposes only and do not continuously run."

Varina residents have pushed for answers on air quality; at a June 2025 meeting, resident Sharon Klein told VPM News, "We know we're not going to kind of stop the data centers from coming. We just want to be safe in the environment." DEQ's Tamara Thompson said the agency's rules allow the emergency generators to run only rarely.

Henrico has required a provisional use permit for every new data center project in the county since 2025, and DEQ's generator permits carry a mandatory 30-day public comment period before it decides on QTS's request for the extra generators.