A lawsuit challenging the PW Digital Gateway data center project – filed by the Oak Valley Homeowners Association and 11 Gainesville-area residents – will be heard in a two-day evidentiary hearing on June 5-6 beginning at 9 a.m. each day, with a potential shift to May 29-30 if plaintiff availability allows.
Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Kimberly A. Irving set the dates after the plaintiffs and defense agreed on a schedule following a nearly three-hour discovery hearing Thursday.
Defendants in the suit are the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and two developers involved with Digital Gateway, H&H Capital Acquisitions and GW Acquisition Co. At full buildout, the Digital Gateway would be the largest data center corridor in the world, with over 22 million square feet of data centers spread out across over 2,100 acres in western Prince William.
During a Jan. 30 hearing, Irving said she required further evidence from the county substantiating its claim that The Washington Post erred in its display of legal advertisements that were supposed to run in the newspaper on Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, 2023.
The plaintiffs contend the county did not properly ensure the materials were approved for publication and that it was not The Washington Post's fault.
The plaintiffs also said they possess an affidavit from a community member who went to the county government complex in Woodbridge on Dec. 4, 2023, following the publication of the first legal ad in The Washington Post and the rezoning materials were not available.
Irving said during an earlier demurrer hearing she is inclined to rule on the case outright during an evidentiary hearing rather than proceeding to a full trial.
Irving on Thursday considered several motions to quash on the part of the plaintiffs, maneuvers seeking to void subpoenas issued by attorneys representing the county, H&H Capital Acquisitions and GW Acquisition Co.
The motions to quash pertained to requests by the defense to depose Oak Valley Homeowners Association President Mac Haddow and the HOA’s management company, Sequoia Management, in order to resolve the crucial issue of whether the plaintiffs received actual notice prior to the Board of County Supervisors’ Dec. 12, 2023, public hearing on the Digital Gateway.
Irving said she disagreed with the defense’s request for all HOA communications after the county Planning Commission’s Digital Gateway hearing on Nov. 8, 2023.
Irving also struck down a portion of the defense’s request to obtain communications between plaintiffs and their spouses. The judge added the case’s 67,000-page record is “overbroad” and asked for greater specificity where dates and future discovery requests are concerned.
“I don’t do open-ended document dumps,” Irving said.
Craig Blakeley, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the upcoming evidentiary hearing will be akin to a “mini-trial” and added he was satisfied with Irving’s response to the motions.
“I think the judge reached an appropriate decision on the motions to quash,” Blakeley told InsideNoVa. “She ruled out the ones that were extreme and she narrowed them back – so I think her decisions were reasonable and probably correct.”
Blakeley spoke to the exact provisions in state code that applied to today’s hearing.
“On the issue about the 15.2-2204B there, that is a complicated legal issue, but it basically asks whether the plaintiffs had actual notice prior to the Dec. 12, 2023, hearing,” Blakely said, “and that's a fairly complicated issue, because there's a statute that goes one way and a Virginia Supreme Court decision that seems to go the other way.”
That Virginia Supreme Court decision is the precedent set forth in Norfolk 102 LLC. v. City of Norfolk, a 2013 case detailing standards for proper notice based on the Norfolk City Council’s revocation of special exceptions for local establishments – an ordinance issue similar to the Digital Gateway’s basis for rezoning.
“The plain language of the [Virginia] Supreme Court seems to conflate written and advertised notice into one,” Irving said.
An attorney representing the Board of County Supervisors declined to comment for this story, citing county policy regarding pending litigation.
Mark Looney, a land use attorney representing H&H Capital Acquisitions, also declined to comment.
Irving cautioned against a drawn-out trial Thursday, citing the need for efficiency given a backlog of upcoming cases on her docket.
“There is no reason to be [still] doing this in 2026,” she said. “This is not to turn into the world’s largest fishing expedition."
