Quantum Frederick Park data center, Frederick, Maryland

Aligned Data Centers is building a 264-megawatt data center campus at Quantum Frederick Park, the former Alcoa Eastalco aluminum smelter site north of Adamstown in Frederick County, Maryland. Its first building, IAD-04, is a 72-megawatt facility on a 75-acre plot, and at full build-out the Aligned campus will have four multi-story buildings. Aligned broke ground on IAD-04 in February 2025 and began its second building, IAD-06, in October 2025; as of June 2026 none of the data centers in the park was yet operating. Aligned pitches the site as an alternative to Northern Virginia, linked to Ashburn by a new fiber ring called QLoop.

The wider park was planned from 2021 as a 2,100-acre gigawatt-scale data center campus. Its original developer, Quantum Loophole, was pushed out in 2024 after a legal dispute, and Catellus Development Corporation became lead developer. Amazon Web Services and Rowan Digital Infrastructure have also broken ground there, and at full build the campus is expected to draw 2,400 megawatts, more than the 2024 average demand of Montgomery and Prince George's counties combined.

Aligned's own path was not smooth. The Maryland Public Service Commission denied its application for 168 diesel backup generators, and Aligned pulled out of the project in mid-2023 after being granted only a provisional exemption for up to 70 megawatts of generators. After the state changed the rules, the Department of the Environment approved an application for 172 diesel backup generators in 2025. Nature Forward, an environmental group, counts at least 67 state inspections that found the Quantum Frederick site in noncompliance or needing corrective action, including boring crews releasing drilling fluid into nearby waterways, and notes that a promised 600-acre nature reserve planned with the University of Maryland has been put in doubt since its design contract was cancelled.

The fight in Frederick County is now about what comes after the park. In December 2025 the County Council approved a 2,600-acre data center zone overlapping the campus, and residents who wanted data centers kept to the existing park collected more than 21,000 signatures for a referendum. On June 30, 2026 the Maryland Supreme Court upheld a ruling that the ordinance could not go to referendum and that the petition was unclear. "We felt a little betrayed," resident Nancy Evans said of the council's decision.

In September the park's developer, Quantum Maryland, offered $110 million in community benefits and 20 per cent less data center development in exchange for an eight-year freeze on zoning changes affecting the campus. County Executive Jessica Fitzwater rejected it on September 14, 2026 after hundreds of public comments and extended the county's moratorium on data center applications to July 1, 2027. "Your comments also made it clear that you do not want to see any more decisions made about data centers, not until we have the next county council seated, and not until the state completes its impact study," she said. The moratorium applies to new data center applications, and residents have said data centers will be a deciding issue in the November county elections that seat that next council.