A judge on Thursday dismissed all 10 counts of a lawsuit against the developers of the Prince William Digital Gateway Thursday afternoon, effectively halting the case before it reached trial.
During a demurrer hearing in Prince William County Circuit Court, Judge Tracy C. Hudson ruled from the bench in sustaining the developers’ opposition to a lawsuit filed by nine Gainesville residents and the American Battlefield Trust.
The plaintiffs, who plan to appeal the ruling, allege it was illegal for the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in December 2023 to grant approval of 23 million square feet of data centers on roughly 2,100 acres along Pageland Lane near Bristow – with 37 data centers overall, roughly the size of 144 Walmart supercenters, immediately adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park.
Three attorneys spoke on the developers’ behalf during the hearing – Mark Looney, representing H&H Capital Acquisitions LLC, a subsidiary of Compass Datacenters; Michael Tucci, representing GW Acquisition, a subsidiary of QTS Data Centers, and Andrew McRoberts from the Sands Anderson PC law firm, representing the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
On the other side, attorney and former Democratic state Sen. Chap Petersen represented the plaintiffs.
The basis for Judge Hudson’s ruling revolved around a provision in Virginia state law known as the safe harbor, or savings, provision, which pertains to advertisements of public hearings by local jurisdictions for pending development projects. Per Petersen’s principal argument, Hudson acknowledged that in December 2023, the board failed to adhere to its own county ordinance in publishing a Digital Gateway advertisement in The Washington Post.
The advertisement ran on Dec. 2, 5, and 9, 2023, immediately prior to the board’s public hearing on Dec. 12-13, which lasted over 27 hours – seven hours for the public hearing, 17 hours for public comment time and over three hours for internal board deliberations.
Hudson ruled the board violated a section of the county ordinance stating there must be six days between published advertisements – as opposed to the board’s three and four days between ads, respectively – as well as a requirement of five days between the publication of the final advertisement and the eventual public hearing; the board also failed to satisfy that provision, with only three days between Dec. 9 and 12.
Hudson added the “newspaper’s failure” to properly publish the advertisements led to a “tortured analysis” of the three dates thereof, but the board did make a sufficient effort to fulfill the state’s notice requirement – despite not obeying its own ordinance.
Petersen cited a motion made by Gainesville District Supervisor Bob Weir – in whose district the Digital Gateway is planned – during the Dec. 12 public hearing to adjourn the board’s meeting until proper notice was given. Petersen noted the motion was defeated, 5-3, prior to the board’s eventual approval of the project.
Petersen also described a disparity between actual notice and written notice, clarifying that the plaintiffs were not challenging the written notice but rather litigating the failure to properly advertise. Upon multiple occasions, the respondents repeatedly called Petersen’s claims “absurd,” pondering why additional notice would be less compliant with the county ordinance.
The issue of notice was addressed in the ninth count out of 10 within the plaintiffs’ filing, and Hudson requested the developers argue this count last as it was “the stickiest issue” in the case, he said.
Despite confirming the board’s violation of its own ordinance, Hudson ultimately held that state law supersedes county ordinance, and thus the Virginia General Assembly’s safe harbor provision in Virginia Code 15.2-2204 – updated on July 1, 2023 – allows the board to act the way it did.
In his ruling from the bench, Hudson also dismissed several earlier counts due to a separate Virginia state law provision mandating a “fairly debatable standard” for rezoning in accordance with “the nature and character of the area” under Virginia Code 15.2-2284. The developers reiterated this argument multiple times throughout the hearing, including upon mention of multiple high-voltage transmission lines that are already running through the area where the Digital Gateway is to be located.
“The standard is, if there is any evidence of reasonableness, then it is to be upheld,” McRoberts said of the board’s decision-making process.
In an email statement to InsideNoVa, Compass Datacenters spokesperson Katy Hancock said the developer is keen to move forward with the planned data center complex following the ruling.
"We are pleased with today’s decision and remain focused on developing our data center campus within the Digital Gateway respectfully and responsibly to the benefit of Prince William County residents,” the statement read. “We are steadfast in our commitment to the project and to implementing the county’s vision for its economic future as reflected in its Comprehensive Plan Amendment.”
A second lawsuit attempting to block the Digital Gateway has also been filed by the nearby Oak Valley Homeowners Association.
“Here's the bottom line, the notice issue was always the crux of this case,” Petersen told reporters and nearly 20 supporters outside the Prince William Judicial Center on Thursday afternoon. “That's why we sent the letter to the county board [on Dec. 11].”
Petersen continued, “We put them on notice – the county, under the judge's own finding, violated zoning ordinance. Now he turned around and took a provision in a state code, not in the zoning ordinance, to save that and he basically blamed The Washington Post based on a FOIA request that we did, which doesn't prove anything other than it just proves The Post didn't publish the ad. As to why they didn't publish the ad, nobody testified from The Washington Post. There was nobody here, we don't know. So I felt like that was a mistake on his part. Clearly, it was a mistake to find that the savings clause that was not in the county ordinance could somehow preserve this application.”
Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition to Protect Prince William County, took Thursday’s setback in stride. She said they’ll appeal the decision.
“Having had a moment to reflect, I want to say thank you, because now we can skip right to the Court of Appeals,” Schlossberg told InsideNoVa. “We don't have to waste any money on a long, drawn-out trial, which in Prince William County would have been unlikely to prevail. So now we get to just go right to the Court of Appeals like we had planned all along.”
A final Circuit Court hearing in the Digital Gateway lawsuit has been scheduled for Nov. 15 at 10:30 a.m., when Hudson will enter a final order into the record.
