Amazon Data Services has purchased a large Prince William County data center campus for $700 million, Washington Business Journal reports.
Stanley Martin Homes sold the Devlin Tech Park, a large and highly contested data center site, to Amazon Data Services. The site is in Bristow, near Devlin Road south of I-66. Amazon purchased about 70 percent of the 270-acre site for roughly $3.7 million per acre.
While $3.7 million per acre is not unusual for data center land, the $700 million sale is among the highest for undeveloped land in the U.S. and likely sets a record for Northern Virginia, according to WBJ.
The Devlin Tech Park can hold up to 3.5 million square feet of data centers and up to three substations.
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors approved rezoning the site from residential to data center use in November 2023. It was also incorporated into the county’s Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, which allows by-right use.
A group of neighbors challenged the rezoning in court, but the county’s circuit court upheld it in 2024. Those neighbors appealed, but the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the circuit court’s ruling and reaffirmed the rezoning this September.
Also in Prince William County, Merrifield Garden Center recently announced that it sold its Gainesville location for data center development for $160 million. That site was also part of the overlay district.
Data center development in the region has been a topic of serious debate. County lawmakers are currently weighing whether to remove the overlay district and end by-right data center use in Prince William County.
Feature image, Alexey Novikov/stock.adobe.com
