SPORTS: Woodbridge cheer reigns again, Gar-Field football, golf report. Pages 25-26
October 14, 2021 | Vol. 20, No. 41 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | $1.00 Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
Trade unions back massive ‘rural crescent’ data center plan Union heads say the projects would generate construction jobs for years By Daniel Berti
Times Staff Writer
A coalition of dozens of regional construction and labor unions are backing plans for a controversial, 800-acre data center campus known as the “PW Digital Gateway” proposed for rural, western Prince William County, further ramping up political pressure behind the project’s approval. The Northern Virginia Labor Federation and the Baltimore-D.C. Building and Construction Trades Council, who together rep-
resent more than 50,000 construction and building trades workers in the D.C. metro region, have thrown their support behind the plan, citing high wages and steady employment opportunities for their workers. It is not uncommon for labor organizations to endorse a single development plan, but neither organization has publicly backed a data center project in Prince William County until now. The PW Digital Gateway could create up to 21 million square feet of data center space, making it the largest potential string of data centers Prince William County. The build-out of such facilities would likely take more than a decade, generating hundreds if not thousands of new construction jobs. See DATA CENTER, page 4
PHOTO BY ROGER SNYDER
Prince William is among the counties with the largest concentration of data centers in the commonwealth. The huge, windowless, box-shaped buildings house computer systems critical for running the internet.
COVID-19 outbreak forces Manassas-area school to go virtual By Cher Muzyk
Contributing Writer
PHOTOS BY MIKE BEATY
Honoring their sacrifices: Prince William County Police Major Shana Hrubes, left, led a ceremony Wednesday, Oct. 6, to honor the 18 local law-enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in Prince William County since 1922. More than 100 officers, family members and community members gathered at the Dr. A.J. Ferlazzo building for the event, which was sponsored by the Prince William County Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association.
The quick rise in COVID-19 cases that forced Bennett Elementary School in Manassas to go virtual this week is an “outbreak,” although it has yet to be officially declared as such, and is likely the result of both in-school and community spread of the virus, officials told parents Monday night. In-person instruction at Bennett Elementary, a Prince William County school of about 750 students near the fairgrounds, has been paused for at least one week to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus and to allow the school to better assess the extent of the outbreak, Prince William Health District Director Dr. Alison Ansher and school division officials told parents during a special webinar. Teachers began instructing students virtually Tuesday, Oct. 12, and will continue until officials determine it is safe for in-person classes to resume. See COVID, page 2
2021 Prince William Times Readers’ Choice
88 DULLES, VA
The winners are here: see page 13
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