A 22 Million SF Data Center Rezoning Died Over an Ad

On March 31, 2026 the Court of Appeals of Virginia issued a published opinion by Judge Stuart A. Raphael in four consolidated appeals, Record Nos. 1584-25-4, 1590-25-4, 1592-25-4 and 2025-24-4. The holding: “Because the Board violated the advertising rules in Code § 15.2-2204(A) (Supp. 2023) and Prince William County Zoning Ordinance § 32-700.60 (2018), we affirm the trial court’s judgment declaring the Compass, DG South, and DG North rezonings (Ordinances 23-57, 23-58, and 23-59) void ab initio.” Void ab initio means void from the beginning, not cancelled going forward. The trial judgment it affirmed was entered by Judge Kimberly A. Irving of the Prince William County Circuit Court after a bench trial, with the final order made effective September 15, 2025.

The three rezonings were large. Per the opinion, Compass, REZ2022-00036, covered 103 parcels in 11 land bays across 884 acres and would have allowed 11.5 million square feet of gross floor area, with most building heights capped at 85 feet. DG North covered 534 acres and 7 million square feet, DG South 342 acres and 3.7 million square feet. That is 1,760 acres and 22.2 million square feet in total, which is PSV’s arithmetic on the court’s three figures. The opinion states that as many as 37 data centers would have been built in the rezoned areas, operating continuously, with proffers capping noise at 60 decibels by day and 55 at night. The applicants of record are single-purpose entities rather than the familiar brand names: H&H Capital Acquisitions, LLC for Compass, and GW Acquisition Co. I, LLC and GW Acquisition Co., LLC for DG North and DG South.

The statute in force required two advertisements, the first no more than 14 days before adoption and at least six days before the second. The county planned for the first to run in The Washington Post on November 28, 2023 and the second on December 5, and the Board’s clerk emailed the paper on November 20 to place it. The first advertisement never ran. Rather than reset the hearing, the Board pressed ahead with December 12 and ran three replacement advertisements, on December 2, December 5 and December 9. The courts held the timing did not satisfy the statute or the county’s own zoning ordinance, and the Board, not the newspaper, was responsible for the failure, which is why the General Assembly’s saving provision for a locality that submitted a correct and timely ad did not rescue it.

What happened at the hearing is the part an operator should read twice. The Planning Commission had recommended denial of all three rezonings on November 8, 2023. The Board opened on December 12 by going into closed session on probable litigation over the rezonings. Supervisor Robert Weir then moved to defer the hearing “until such date as a proper public notice has issued,” saying it would avoid expected litigation; his motion failed five to three. The developers submitted revised proffers in the early hours of December 13 while public comment was still running, and staff told the Board it had not been able to vet them thoroughly. A motion to deny failed four to four. Supervisor Victor Angry’s motion to approve passed four to three with one abstention, and the Board adjourned at 1:14 p.m. on December 13, 27 hours after it convened. Two years later the entitlement was worth nothing.

The artifact is one file per legislative approval a firm is relying on, built during diligence rather than after a challenge. Inputs: the governing notice statute and the locality’s own zoning ordinance notice section, in the versions in force on the hearing date; the publisher’s affidavits of publication and the actual clippings with their dates; the dates the proposed ordinance text and any revised proffers became available for public review; the agenda, minutes and vote records for the hearing; and the 30 day window in which a notice challenge must be filed. Output: for each approval, the two publication dates with the interval between them, whether the first ran inside the statutory window, whether the text was available when advertised, and whether anyone put a notice objection on the record before the vote.

The reviewer is land use counsel, with the development lead accountable for acting on what the file says. The approval gate: no acquisition of entitled land, and no construction loan closing that relies on the entitlement, until the file is complete and clean, or the price reflects the risk that it is not. An assistant is genuinely useful here, because the work is retrieval and date arithmetic across long records: pulling affidavits, comparing publication dates against the statute, and flagging where a hearing proceeded over a documented objection. It should not opine on whether a defect is curable, and it should not be the reason a firm skips counsel.