Loudoun Is Trying to Pause the Largest Data Center Market on Earth. The County's Own FAQ Says It Cannot, and the Projects That Matter Are the Ones a Pause Cannot Touch.

The record here is unusually clean because Loudoun publishes its own project history. The Data Center Standards and Locations project began on February 6, 2024. On July 2, 2024 the board approved an intent to amend the zoning ordinance. On March 18, 2025 it adopted Phase 1: data centers, previously allowed by-right in the zoning districts that made Data Center Alley possible, became a special exception use, which means a public hearing before the Planning Commission and a recorded vote of the board for every new one. That vote was 7 to 2, with Kristen Umstattd and Caleb Kershner opposed.

The same day the board took a second, closer vote. A grandfathering resolution allowed applications accepted before February 12, 2025 to keep moving under the old rules, provided the project sits more than 500 feet from residential units and is "diligently pursued." That passed 5 to 4. Mike Turner, Laura TeKrony, Juli Briskman and Sylvia Glass voted no. Loudoun Now reported 22 applications continuing under administrative review, against roughly 46 million square feet already built or permitted and about 61.5 million square feet of potential capacity.

Sixteen months later the board came back to both halves. On July 22, 2026, on Briskman's motion, it voted 6 to 1 with two absent to direct staff to prepare a pause on new data center applications, site plans and substation permits while Phase 2 of the rewrite is completed. Phyllis Randall, Briskman, TeKrony, Turner, Glass and Koran Saines voted yes; Umstattd voted no; Kershner and Matt Letourneau were absent. Staff were told to bring it to September 15. Phase 2, which rewrites the use standards and the 2019 General Plan policies for data centers and substations, is expected to take about 14 months and reach the Planning Commission in February 2027. The county has scheduled open houses on September 28 and 30, 2026, from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m.

On September 2, 2026, Briskman and TeKrony moved to rescind the 2025 grandfathering and subject the protected applications to the same special exception review as everyone else. The board did not vote on the amendment. It voted unanimously to obtain the county attorney's legal opinion first, to be presented in public at the October 6 meeting. Fox 5 reported the reason in one line: supervisors "want to avoid potential lawsuits." Randall said she wanted the public to hear the legal advice. Umstattd called the proposal reckless. Kershner called it "a ridiculous motion" that risked "billions of dollars" in litigation, and compared it to changing the rules mid-game in Monopoly.

Loudoun's website carries a data center FAQ, and question 1802 asks whether the county can enact a moratorium on new data centers. The county's answer: the Board of Supervisors "does not have the legal authority to implement a moratorium on new data center applications." Virginia law "requires the Board of Supervisors to consider each rezoning or special exception application on its merits," and "a blanket prohibition against approval of any application for data center development, that is, a 'moratorium,' without considering each application on its individual merits, is not legally permissible."

County Attorney Leo Rogers told the board the same thing on July 22 before it voted to explore one anyway. Virginia is the strictest Dillon Rule state in the country: a locality has only the powers the General Assembly has expressly granted or that are necessarily implied from them. The Virginia Supreme Court applied that rule to exactly this situation in Board of Supervisors v. Horne, 216 Va. 113 (1975), striking down Fairfax County's attempt to stop accepting site plans and subdivision plats while it rewrote its plans. Fairfax had declared, in a January 7, 1974 resolution, that "emergency conditions" existed because of unprecedented growth; the court held that the power to require plat approval does not include the power to suspend it. Rogers said the courts have since recognized only narrow exceptions, such as temporary restrictions tied to an identifiable public emergency. Brian Winterhalter of DLA Piper told Bisnow in August that "there are relatively few states that follow the Dillon's Rule and the principles of the Dillon Rule as specifically and hold it in as high regard as Virginia."

What the county can do is the thing it already did. It can amend its zoning ordinance to make data centers a special exception use, which it did in March 2025, and it can then deny individual applications on their merits at the hearing, which it can do today for every application filed after February 12, 2025. Gregory Riegle of McGuireWoods described the lawful path as "effectively a two-step process": amend the plan, then amend the zoning to match. Some coverage has said a locality may "postpone" applications for up to 12 months. The provision being pointed at, Virginia Code section 15.2-2286, allows an ordinance to bar a substantially identical rezoning petition from being refiled for up to a year after it is decided. It is a bar on refiling, not a power to stop deciding.

Supervisor TeKrony's sentence is the sharpest thing anyone has said in this fight, and it is accurate: "We've given the data center industry 25 years to build by-right. There is no legal requirement for grandfathering. It is a choice." Nothing in Virginia law obliged the board to let pre-February 2025 applications finish under the old rules. It chose to, by one vote, and a board can ordinarily rescind a resolution it adopted.

The question the county attorney has been asked is narrower and harder. Virginia Code section 15.2-2307 protects a landowner's vested right to develop when three things are true: there has been a "significant affirmative governmental act" allowing the development, the owner relied on it in good faith, and the owner has incurred substantial expense in diligent pursuit of the project. Our reading, which is not legal advice: a board resolution that told 22 named applicants they may continue under the old rules, on the condition that they diligently pursue their projects, is a strong candidate for a significant affirmative governmental act, and the applicants who spent money in the 18 months since can point to the reliance and the diligence the statute asks for. The statute's own list of acts it deems significant is project specific: an approved rezoning, a special exception with conditions, an approved site plan or subdivision plat, a zoning administrator's written determination. A blanket resolution covering 22 applications at once is not on that list, and the list is illustrative rather than closed. That gap is the whole case. It is the shape of the "billions of dollars" Kershner was talking about, and it is why the board asked for an opinion rather than voting.

The industry's position is that the 2025 framework "provided certainty, predictability and fairness," in the words of Nicole Riley of the Data Center Coalition, and that a pause "would send a signal that the area is closed for business." QTS, Blackstone's data center arm, has pointed to $2 billion invested in the county. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance argued on August 31 that rescinding grandfathering "retroactively rewrites rules," and cited a Northern Virginia Technology Council estimate that losing the industry's tax base would mean "a 91 percent property tax increase, about $5,800 a year for the average homeowner." That figure models the revenue disappearing entirely. The Loudoun Coalition's scenarios, built from the county's own adopted budgets, model declines of 11 to 42 percent, not zero, and the county's own tax page already says the revenue will plateau.

The policy fight has a fence line, and it is on Glenn Drive in Sterling. The board approved the Vantage VA2 campus in March 2023 with eight natural gas turbines to run the buildings until utility power arrives. It is the only data center in Virginia running on onsite gas turbines full time. At an August 24, 2026 town hall held by Supervisor Koran Saines with Vantage and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the company said it does not expect grid power until 2040. The facility is fully permitted through DEQ and, the company says, in compliance with the zoning ordinance.

The dispute is about what the permit does not measure. Saines told residents the county's own readings never exceeded 55 dBA. Kasey Hatch, who lives about half a mile away, measured 70 to 80 decibels on an 87 degree day and told Loudoun Now she wears earplugs around her house. "As soon as the weather started getting warmer" the turbines became "intolerably loud." Vantage says it is "actively working with third-party engineers to explore additional sound mitigation options" and that the turbines are temporary pending grid connection, which on its own timeline is fourteen years away. The Piedmont Environmental Council commissioned a health impact report on the site in February 2026 and counts more than 5,000 backup generators across the county.

This is the pattern our noise guide and generator guide describe: an operator with a valid permit, a county measurement taken somewhere and sometime, and a resident measurement taken at the property line on the day it was worst. In a nuisance claim the second one is the evidence, and it only exists if someone kept it. For what to record and how, see documenting data center harm.

Nothing about this fight needs a lawyer yet, and the dates that matter are public.

• September 28 and 30, 2026, 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. The county's Phase 2 open houses. Phase 2 is where the actual use standards for noise, generators, setbacks and substations get written, and it does not reach the Planning Commission until February 2027. Comments made now shape the draft.
• October 6, 2026. The county attorney's opinion on rescinding the grandfathering, presented in public at the board's request. If the opinion is that vested rights bar rescission, the 11 million square feet proceeds under the old rules and the pause is beside the point. If it is that rescission is lawful, expect a vote and expect litigation.
• Every special exception hearing. Since March 2025 each new data center needs one. The board can deny on the merits at any of them without a moratorium, and the Planning Commission has already recommended denial of the Spring Valley Technology Park, 325 acres, 3.54 million square feet and 780 megawatts on Evergreen Mills Road near Beaverdam Reservoir, 5 to 0 on July 23, 2026, on the ground that it is "a fundamental departure" from the transitional residential uses the plan envisions there. Our registry lists the six Loudoun sites still proposed or permitted, including Cross Mill Center, which residents are already contesting.
• The list itself. The county has not published the current set of grandfathered applications. It is a public record. A request to the Department of Planning and Zoning for every data center application accepted before February 12, 2025 and still under administrative review is the single most useful document a neighborhood group could hold on October 6. Our guide to fighting a proposed data center has the request language.

If the grandfathering is rescinded and an operator sues, the case will be about vested rights and the county, not about neighbors. If it is not rescinded and a grandfathered campus is built next to you, the case that eventually matters is the one Kasey Hatch is building on Glenn Drive: a record of what the facility does, measured at the property line, dated. Our guide to what it takes to get an injunction explains why that record decides whether a court will act.