Three Alexandria City Council members, Abdel Elnoubi, Canek Aguirre, and Sandy Marks, joined residents marching on October 10 from Aslin Beer Company to the Plaza 500 site in Lincolnia, where Starwood Capital Group has planned a data center campus. The march launched a two-week campaign calling for a statewide moratorium on new data center development in Virginia, with advocates citing grid impacts, water use, land use, and proximity to dense residential areas. The Plaza 500 project is allowed by right under Fairfax County zoning, having been grandfathered under the county's more restrictive data center ordinance, but Dominion Energy's proposed Edsall Road substation still faces a public facilities review by the Fairfax County Planning Commission, now scheduled for December 2. Councilman Elnoubi said he is exploring legal options if the substation is approved, and called for state legislation giving localities a say when data centers are planned near their borders in adjacent jurisdictions.
The Plaza 500 case illustrates a regulatory gap in Virginia where a large data center campus can proceed without a public hearing because it qualifies as by-right development, leaving a utility substation review as the only formal checkpoint for community input. The campaign for a statewide moratorium, if it gains traction ahead of Virginia's legislative session, could lead to changes that affect the permitting environment for data centers across the state, which hosts one of the highest concentrations of data center capacity in the United States.
City officials personally participating in a protest march against a specific named data center project is an unusual and newsworthy escalation of community opposition in a major metro area.