Loudoun supervisors vote today to lock in a yearlong pause on data center rezonings

Update, Oct. 21: Loudoun supervisors postponed the vote to Nov. 17 at the county attorney’s request. Read the latest.

By Staff Reporter

LEESBURG, Va. — Loudoun County supervisors are scheduled Tuesday to put in writing the pause they voted for last month: a resolution that would hold off final board action on new data center and substation rezonings for up to a year while the county rewrites its rules for the industry.

The resolution is item 14.p on the agenda for the Board of Supervisors’ 4 p.m. business meeting. It would pause board consideration of legislative applications for data centers and substations for no more than 12 months from the date each application first went to the Planning Commission, so the board can apply the second phase of its data center zoning and comprehensive plan amendments to them. The pause would be retroactive to Sept. 15, and it would not cause any application to become inactive.

Not a moratorium

County Attorney Leo Rogers has told the board that it may temporarily defer legislative applications, subject to statutory deadlines, but that Virginia law does not allow a blanket moratorium on administrative applications, according to a Sept. 16 statement from the office of Algonkian District Supervisor Juli Briskman, who led the effort. Virginia law generally requires the board to act on a legislative land-use application within 12 months of its first presentation to the Planning Commission unless the applicant agrees to an extension, and the pause is built around that clock.

The board approved the pause 7-1-1 on Sept. 15 and, in a separate 7-1-1 vote with Briskman opposed, carved out an exception for “grid reliability” substations. It also directed staff to ask applicants whose cases could hit the 12-month deadline to delay voluntarily until the new rules are finished.

“This pause is a major step forward. Now we have the breathing room required to complete the critical work of revising our regulations to protect our communities,” Briskman said after that vote.

There are 33 active legislative applications for data centers or substations, one of them solely a grid-reliability substation, according to county documents cited by WTOP. Loudoun has more than 200 data centers, the most of any Virginia locality.

What the pause does not touch

The pause applies only to legislative cases that require a board vote. At least 17 land-use cases representing more than 11 million square feet of development are “grandfathered” under a March 2025 resolution and are moving through by-right administrative review, Briskman’s office said, so the pause does not affect them.

An effort to end that grandfathering stalled Oct. 6, when Rogers warned that removing the protections could expose the county to about $60 million in litigation. The board tabled both the rollback and a proposal to hire an outside auditor to review the projects, FOX 5 reported.

Phase 2 of the county’s Data Center Standards and Locations initiative, which began in September 2025, covers siting and compatibility, substation policy, on-site power generation and battery storage, as well as noise, building height and parking standards. It is expected to be finished in 2027.

A regional turn

Loudoun is not alone. On Sept. 22, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors voted 8-0 to end by-right data center development countywide, sharply shrinking its Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District so that future projects need a special-use permit. Data centers already built or under construction, and those with site plans past a quality-control threshold, stay in the overlay, and the board adopted a 90-day grace period, InsideNoVa reported. Fairfax County supervisors hold a public hearing Oct. 27 on zoning changes required by new state laws, including a requirement that rezoning and special exception applications for high-energy-use facilities such as data centers include a noise study.

Also on Tuesday’s Loudoun agenda is a proposal from Sterling District Supervisor Koran Saines’s office to move the board’s review of the Golden Substation applications from Dec. 1 to Nov. 5.

Photo: Data centers near Ashburn in Loudoun County. Theodore Christopher / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.