The word “moratorium” has gained significant traction in Virginia since Sen. Glen Sturtevant sent a letter to Gov. Abigail Spanberger in July asking her to stop development while the state studies its ability to onload more data centers. 

Among local leaders, however, the term is proving either challenging, or simply irrelevant to the local conversation.

In two adjoining Central Virginia localities – Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg – leaders are working to balance some citizens’ opposition to siting data centers in their communities with the economic upsides this industry brings and the rapidly changing economies they represent.

Spotsylvania recently passed a resolution that leveraged the call for a statewide moratorium to try and put pressure on Richmond to address Virginia’s energy generation challenge, while simultaneously insisting the state not infringe on local rights to make decisions on data centers. For some Board members it is an imperfect solution to a problem they have no control over. For others, it’s “performative theater.”

In Fredericksburg, moratoria don’t appear to be a topic of discussion among city council members, owing in part to the way the city addressed data center development in 2025 by creating a Technology Overlay District (TOD). The challenge before the city next week is whether to extend data center development outside the TOD. A decision that some council members feel is best handled locally, without the specter of a moratorium complicating the issue.

An Unwieldy Tool

For long-serving Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors member Chris Yakabouski, Sen. Sturtevant’s letter to the governor asking for a moratorium on data center approvals presented an opportunity to challenge the state government for not having “a plan” that addresses the challenge of energy generation. 

So last week, Yakabouski put forward a resolution that attempted to thread the needle between Sturtevant’s call for a moratorium and his desire to have the commonwealth address the challenges of energy generation without stepping on local land use control. 

The Board “recognizes Senator Sturtevant’s call for action” to the governor, the resolution reads, but this document “shall not be interpreted in any way to inhibit or affect any individual data center development project under review by the County.”

The resolution “is focused on state infrastructure,” Yakabouski said at the August 11 Board meeting before it was approved 4-2, not the powers of the locality to make land use decisions. “Leave our powers alone.”

The goal, he continued, is to “hopefully” make “those at the state level see what an issue this has become and do the right thing and do their job.”

The “moratorium” language was a bridge too far for some Board members, however.  

Yakabouski wants state leaders to “do their job” on energy generation. But what the state government should do to address that question isn’t made clear in the resolution. And that is an issue for Spotsylvania Board member Drew Mullins, one of two members who opposed the resolution, “A moratorium,” he said from the dais on August 11, “without any plan is political theater, in my opinion.” 

He told the Virginia Free Press (VFP) that of Sturtevant’s two stated concerns, water and energy, the former isn’t an issue in Spotsylvania. “Cooling a data center in Spotsylvania,” he said, is going to be done using purple pipe/reuse water. 

As for the concern about energy, Mullins told VFP that “imposing a moratorium doesn’t address this issue.”

For Charlie Payne, a local attorney who frequently represents data center developers in the region, talk of a moratorium has two pitfalls.

While the commonwealth could attempt to impose a moratorium, “the county has no such authority under Virginia law.” “The moratorium language is contrary to Virginia law,” he told VFP. “And the message it sends to the investment and development community is, don’t come to Spotsylvania County.”

The county is not new to siting data centers. Currently, 5.2 million square feet of data centers are under construction or in the site plan stage in the county, while rezonings have been approved for another 6.9 million square feet. 

In the process of paving the way for those approved projects and rezonings over the past two years, Mullins said that the county worked hard to hear from citizens and work with developers to put in place guidelines that addressed citizens’ concerns. 

Today, all data center projects must go through a Special Use Permitting (SUP) process to give the Board and citizens a chance to weigh in on new projects. 

Dr. Deborah Frazier also opposed the resolution. Likewise, the reasoning was around leveraging a tool – moratorium – that doesn’t fit the situation. “Before we go and follow a moratorium for someone else,” she said at the Board meeting, “why not work with our elected officials to have a conversation.”

Below the Radar

While Spotsylvania is leveraging Sen. Sturtevant’s moratorium letter, neighboring Fredericksburg will likely decide this month if it wants to extend data center development for a proposed project beyond the boundaries of the Technology Overlay District (TOD) it passed in February 2025. That district would allow for up to 2.5 million square feet of data centers.

To date, the idea of a statewide moratorium doesn’t appear to be playing into the discussion. The reason is tied in part to the city’s TOD, according to Council member Matt Rowe, who was not on Council at the time the TOD was adopted.

“The city made a decision on where to support data center development,” he told VFP. “We support data center development in the TOD.” 

For Rowe, a moratorium would only tie the city’s hands. “I personally don’t support a moratorium because it takes decision-making power away from Fredericksburg,” he said.

The decision before the Council would bring a significant financial windfall to the city. It would also mean jobs for laborers involved in constructing the project, should it be approved.

Developer Penzance is asking Fredericksburg City Council to approve a data center project along the Hylton Tract, which sits outside the TOD. The tract is an 84-acre undeveloped parcel bordered on three sides by Interstate 95, Cowan Boulevard, and Route 3. 

Penzance has twice brought the idea before Fredericksburg’s Planning Commission, most recently in December 2025. Both times the Planning Commission voted to reject the proposal. 

In response, Faizan Qureshi, vice president of development for the company, told VFP “we’ve been trying to figure out what is the right balance … between the concerns that were raised [at those meetings] and how we deliver the best package possible to the city.”

The proposal that City Council will decide on contains a number of changes to. Among them, Qureshi told VFP, “We’ve essentially cut the density in half” from 2 million square feet to 1 million square feet. Further, instead of four buildings the project would have two buildings. Also, “we’re greater than two football fields from the closest home.” The project has also lowered the building heights so they’re below the tree line. And cooling would be done by air cooling, not potable water.

The company is also proferring 20 acres of the 80-acre campus to the city as “open space, and the city can perpetually preserve it as open space or do with it as they like.”

Finally, said Qureshi, Penzance is “committing to fund $18 million to the city’s capital improvement projects.” In addition, the company is offering $20 million “to the school system’s budget,” $500,000 to the city’s career and technical program, $1 million for the city’s sewer and waste water treatment infrastructure, and $455,000 to the city’s public safety fund.

For City Council member Will Mackintosh, the TOD is something “we need to honor.” It was established, he said, following “a community conversation about how, where, and under what conditions data centers made sense for the City of Fredericksburg.” That discussion led the Council to designate “a specific area of the city for a data center campus” and imposed “rigorous environmental restrictions that made sense for that site.”

Also of concern for Mackintosh is “proportion.” Noting that the city is just over 10 square miles in size, “having a TOD that covers 250 acres is about right,” he told VFP. “It allows us to capture the upsides of data center tax revenue without having them overrun our landscape.”

He also notes that the city has few developable parcels left, and “we need to make sure that we are pursuing other worthy economic development goals besides just local tax revenue.”

Asked to respond to concerns over the project siting outside the TOD, Qureshi said that “compared to the TOD and most other sites in the region, it has the shortest and least impactful transmission line pathway.” He further noted that “the city has specifically called out this site in the comprehensive plan to be a high density economic and jobs center,” and that the project is “bound on three sides by roads. Only one side has residential,” and the nearest house is over 650 feet away.”

For union workers in the city, the project comes with upsides as well. The developer and the Baltimore-DC Metro Building Trades Council (BDCBT) have agreed to a Project Labor Agreement.

In a press release, BDCBT President Greg Akerman said: “By setting standards for employment, providing worker protections and guaranteeing family-supporting wages and benefits, we are guaranteeing that this project will translate into high-quality, local careers and clear pathways for Fredericksburg City residents to learn skilled trades through registered apprenticeships.” 

The release also notes that the project, which will hit its peak construction phase in 2029, will create more than 2,800 construction jobs, generating over $190 million in wages. Once complete, the campus is projected to support more than 100 direct, high-wage operational roles, with an average annual salary of approximately $100,000. 

That would be a significant boon to union laborers who live in the Fredericksburg area and must commute north for work.

A Delicate Balance

Siting data centers requires a delicate balancing act between political will, public opinion, and economic planning. 

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, localities that share a border but vary significantly in size and population and economics, offer an interesting case study into the challenges each project presents. 

The idea of a statewide moratorium is having a moment in Virginia, but before taking that action, leaders in Richmond would do well to spend some time talking with the localities about the challenges and opportunities they face before hitting pause. 

Freezing development would not only have significant economic impacts on the commonwealth; it could also miss the more nuanced issues that developers and the localities they work with face.