Two of the top staff members in the Prince William County Planning Office resigned last week amid highly contested building projects that would make the sprawling county the world leader in data center development.
Prince William County Planning Director Mark Buenavista officially left his position Friday, just days after Deputy Planning Director Meika Daus announced she would leave in March. Daus has been the deputy director since May 2021 but with the department for almost eight years.
Buenavista’s departure comes less than a month after he accepted the position, the Prince William Times reported. Reasons for the departures were not provided.
The unexpected resignations come as extensive public debate looms over the potential approval of plans for data center development that would occupy expansive swaths of county land. Of those projects in limbo, the Devlin Technology Park would bring up to 14 data centers to 270 acres in Bristow. Another, the John Marshall Technology Park, would allow the construction of a data center within 110 feet of Haymarket’s PACE West School, a school for at-risk students.
Perhaps the most contentious, meanwhile, is a rezoning review on behalf of the Prince William Digital Gateway, which would occupy over 2,100 acres adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park. On its own, the 27.6-million-square-foot construction project would command development space approximately equal to Loudoun County’s entire assembly of data centers, the report said.
The development plans have elicited no shortage of pushback from residents who have railed against having gargantuan structures flanking schools and residential areas.
Some county policy makers have speculated that the string of recent resignations from the county’s planning office are the result of immense corporate pressure to push plans toward approval. In addition to Buenavista and Daus, county planning manager Stephen Gardner stepped down this month. Gardner had been with the department about 18 months.
“The sudden and coincident departure of three of the most important public officials in the county planning office may be telling us the conditions under which they were asked to perform their jobs were not only unreasonable, but that it unfairly tested their personal ethics and standards,” Kathy Kulick, the vice chair of the HOA Roundtable of Northern Virginia, told the Prince William Times.
Kulick, whose organization was formed as a staunch opponent to the Digital Gateway project, noted that the recent resignations hints at county leadership “coming apart at the seams.”
Another opponent of the Digital Gateway, Prince William County Supervisor Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, suggested that the county’s planning staff have been unfairly pressured by Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler, D-At Large, to move the projects through the approval process despite qualms.
“I strongly believe the chair is interfering in planning decisions that should be made objectively based on planning staff’s professional expertise,” Lawson told the Prince William Times. “We have a planning department that is being wrongly influenced by elected officials.”
“I have never asked staff to go against their professional judgment,” Wheeler said in response. “What Supervisor Lawson believes is just her opinion and does not make it fact.”
The county provided no additional details regarding staff resignations or potential replacements, the report said.
“I think we need to find the best person who can both take and handle this job,” County Supervisor Margaret Franklin, D-Woodbridge, said.
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