Data Center Zoning in Fairfax County, Virginia

The 2024 zoning ordinance amendment: size caps and a Special Exception default

On March 19, 2024, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors directed staff to rewrite the zoning ordinance's data-center provisions, and adopted the resulting Data Centers Zoning Ordinance Amendment on September 10, 2024 (effective the next day). The amendment keeps a 40,000-square-foot by-right size limit for data centers in the C-3 and C-4 commercial districts, and sets a new 80,000-square-foot by-right limit for the I-2, I-3, and I-4 industrial districts. Any data center that exceeds those thresholds -- which, in practice, describes most large modern facilities -- now needs a Special Exception approved by the Board of Supervisors rather than qualifying automatically. The amendment also added a 50-foot landscaped transitional buffer between data centers and adjacent residential uses, new architectural standards (varied facades, defined entrance features) intended to soften the buildings' industrial appearance, and noise limits aimed at cooling equipment and backup generators.

For a buyer or investor evaluating industrially or commercially zoned land anywhere near Fairfax County's data-center corridors, this means the zoning district alone no longer answers the size question -- confirm directly with the Department of Planning and Development whether a specific parcel's development plans would trigger the Special Exception process, since that process is now the norm rather than the exception for large-scale data-center construction.

A $166.8 million county land sale shows the pressure is real, not theoretical

The scale of demand became concrete on March 17, 2026, when the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to sell 41.7 acres of a 128-acre county-owned property at 3721 Stonecroft Boulevard in Chantilly (Sully District) -- currently home to county police firearms, K9, and emergency-vehicle-operations training facilities -- to data-center developer Starwood Capital Group (structured as SCG Global Holdings LLC) for $166.8 million. The sale proceeds, along with other Capital Improvement Plan funds, are earmarked to modernize the county's remaining police training facilities on the site. Environmental and community groups raised concerns about the Sully District's continued industrialization by data centers and the sector's water and energy demands, but the vote passed without dissent.

That a county government itself is now a active seller of land specifically for data-center development -- at a per-acre price well above typical industrial land values in the region -- is a strong, concrete signal for anyone evaluating land near the Sully District, the Dulles corridor, or other Fairfax County industrial zones: data-center demand is actively reshaping land values and zoning outcomes in these areas right now, not as a future possibility.

The substation fight: data centers bring grid infrastructure fights too

Data centers don't just require zoned land -- they require enormous amounts of electricity, and that has produced its own land-use conflict. Dominion Energy has proposed an Edsall Data Center Substation, a five-acre, 230-kilovolt facility on the Fairfax County/Alexandria border, sited as close as 67 to 100 feet from homes in the Bren Mar neighborhood depending on the source. More than 1,300 Virginians have asked the Governor to publicly oppose the project, and a "Save Bren Mar" coalition has organized specifically around it, arguing the county's 2024 zoning amendment was too lenient toward the industry driving this kind of infrastructure buildout. If you're evaluating residential property anywhere near an existing or planned electrical substation associated with data-center growth in Fairfax County, treat proximity to planned grid infrastructure -- not just to a data center building itself -- as its own diligence item.

A distinct, higher tax rate on data-center equipment

Fairfax County also taxes data-center computer and server equipment at a separate, higher personal-property tax rate ($4.57 per $100 of assessed value as of 2026) than ordinary business personal property, a mechanism other Northern Virginia jurisdictions competing for the same data-center investment also use to capture tax revenue from the industry. That revenue is part of why county officials frame data-center growth as a net fiscal benefit, even as nearby residents raise noise, water-use, and grid-infrastructure objections -- both sides of that tension are worth understanding if a specific parcel's value or future zoning treatment depends on the county's ongoing balancing act between data-center tax revenue and community opposition.