Data Centers Pose Planning, Budget Puzzle

BY RENSS GREENE rgreene@loudounnow.com

As the county budget returns to pre-pandemic norms, and supervisors and planners enter the final phase of rewriting the zoning ordinance, one industry’s success continues to pose a tricky challenge: data centers.

Through years of effort and billions of dollars of investment, Loudoun County has become home to the largest data center market on the planet. That has also meant huge influxes of tax revenue for the county government, mostly from the property tax on the computer equipment inside. The county’s fiscal year 2024 budget, which began July 1, anticipates almost $561 million in revenues just from that tax—just shy of the county government’s entire $588 million general fund, even before considering real estate taxes on the land beneath them.

And that land is valuable. The top 10 real estate owners in Loudoun by value are all data center companies. Prices for some prime data center land now top $4 million an acre, pricing out other

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