Loudoun Votes to Pause New Data Center Applications

The item was 14.l on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors’ September 15, 2026 business meeting agenda in Leesburg: “Response to Board Motion to Cease Processing Data Center Applications,” with County Attorney Leo P. Rogers and Dan Galindo of Planning and Zoning as staff contacts. The staff report sets out the history. At its July 22, 2026 business meeting, the board voted 6-1-2, with Supervisor Kristen Umstattd opposed and Supervisors Kershner and Letourneau absent, to have staff prepare an item for September 15 to cease processing data center applications, administrative or legislative, data center site plans and any substation application until the county completes the Phase 2 Data Center Standards and Locations amendments to its Zoning Ordinance and Comprehensive Plan, and to research whether other Virginia jurisdictions had paused data center applications. The County Attorney’s office answered with an attorney-client privileged memorandum, which is not in the public packet. The recommendation that is public is short: staff recommends that the board take no action. The report lists two other alternatives and one draft motion, marked as not recommended by staff, to direct staff to prepare a resolution to pause consideration of legislative applications for data centers and substations while the board considers the Phase 2 amendments.

The board went the other way. NBC4 Washington and WJLA both report that supervisors voted 7-1-1 to direct staff to draft a resolution pausing new data center applications for up to 12 months, with Umstattd voting no and Kershner abstaining. NBC4 reports that each application would be paused for one year from its submission, and that Chair Phyllis Randall said the measure is not a ban or a moratorium but a way to give the county time to write new rules. WJLA reports that the pause applies only to new applications, that a final board vote is expected in October, and that Umstattd opposed it because she believes the board lacks the legal authority and the pause could draw lawsuits. As of this morning the county had not posted the adopted motion or an action summary, so the vote count, the 12-month term and the October date are reported facts, not yet a county record, and whether the adopted motion follows the staff draft’s limit to legislative applications is not established. One date needs a flag: WJLA dates the vote Tuesday, September 16, but the county’s agenda sets the meeting on Tuesday, September 15, and PSV uses the county’s date.

Loudoun’s own fact sheet explains why a pause here moves more real estate than one anywhere else. The county describes itself as home to one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world, and its record traces how that happened: its zoning administrator classified data centers as similar to offices, buildable by right anywhere offices were allowed. In March 2025, Phase 1 of the Data Center Standards and Locations project ended by-right development of most data centers, so new ones need a legislative approval with public input, while a grandfathering resolution let certain pending applications continue through the by-right process. The fact sheet says the adopted fiscal 2027 budget projects $1.3 billion of data center revenue, 40 percent of the total budget. WJLA reports county leaders put the share at more than half; PSV uses the county’s published figure. The county’s August 24 release says Phase 2 covers noise, on-site energy generation, battery energy storage systems, substations, and data center design and siting, holds open houses on September 28 in Ashburn and September 30 in Leesburg, and expects the project before the Planning Commission in February 2027.

Read those together and the scope question is the whole story. The July motion reached administrative applications and site plans, which is where the grandfathered pipeline lives. The staff draft reaches legislative applications, which since March 2025 is where nearly every new data center project goes. A legislative-only pause leaves approved, grandfathered and in-review projects on their current path and puts land whose value depends on a future special exception behind a clock. Virginia Business reported on August 21 that Supervisors Juli Briskman and Laura TeKrony proposed ending the grandfathering resolution, a change it said would affect more than 20 administrative applications; that proposal was not on the September 15 agenda, and PSV did not find its outcome in the county record. The same agenda shows the county’s other lever at work. Under Zoning Ordinance Section 10.09.C.2.a.1 the Planning Commission has 60 days to act on a Commission Permit or the application is considered approved, and the Administrative Items Report asked the board to extend that clock by 365 days for the Fractus-Lenticular substations on 16.06 acres in Broad Run, the Thayer Road substation on about 9.82 acres in Sterling, and the Berwick Energy Storage facility on about 5.5 acres. The Fractus-Lenticular permits had already been deemed approved on June 29 when the 60-day clock ran out, and the board overruled and remanded them 7-0-2 on July 22. Power, not land, is the binding input for a data center, and a substation is where it enters the site.

The useful artifact is an entitlement status register, one row per Loudoun parcel a firm owns, lends against or is bidding, built from public records. Inputs: the county’s land management system records for each application; the September 15 agenda package; the resolution, once staff drafts it and the board adopts it; the March 2025 grandfathering resolution; the Phase 2 drafts as they post; and the county’s map of existing and proposed data centers. Output: columns that decide something. Application type, whether administrative, legislative, site plan or Commission Permit. Acceptance date, the statutory clock and every extension on record. Grandfathered or not. Whether the project depends on a new substation, and that substation’s own application and clock. Which version of the pause would catch it: the July motion, the staff draft, or the adopted text, with the last column left blank until the text exists. And the Phase 2 topics that touch the site, since noise, on-site generation, battery storage and siting standards can change a project that clears the pause. Every populated cell cites a page of a county record.

The reviewer is the development lead, with land use counsel on the pause and the grandfathering columns, and the approval gate is narrow: no valuation, bid or loan sizing uses an entitlement date for a Loudoun data center site until counsel has checked it against the adopted resolution. An assistant does the volume work well. This brief came out of a 1,987-page agenda package, and the useful facts were an item on page 1,974 and three one-page permit extensions buried in an administrative report. Pulling those out, tracking 60-day and 365-day clocks, and diffing a July motion against a September draft is exactly the work to hand off. What it should not do is decide whether the pause is lawful under Virginia law, predict the October vote, or treat reporting on the motion as if it were the motion. PSV ran no model on this record, tested no product, and promises no cost, schedule or entitlement outcome.