JK Land refiles Gainesville data center plan with a five-to-seven-year wait

JK Land Holdings has filed plans with Prince William County for a campus of five data centers in Gainesville, Virginia. The property, formerly Hillwood Camping Park, occupies 82 acres and lies outside the county's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, where data centers are allowed by right. It therefore needs a special use permit, and the hearing has not yet been scheduled.

The proposal has changed since it first appeared in 2023. The latest version trims building height and square footage and revises proffers on plant equipment, according to Data Center Dynamics. The county's planning commission and board of supervisors have not yet taken it up.

The land's history makes the fight personal. Hillwood Camping Park operated there until 2022, when JK, having bought the property, closed it in hopes of winning a rezoning. The first data center plan surfaced the following year.

The campground's closure took a recreational site out of use, and the land has sat empty since. For neighbors, the emptiness is a visible sign of an unresolved question: will this piece of Gainesville become a data center or not?

The plans also include a substation, a reminder that data centers are, at bottom, load on the grid. The substation may attract as much scrutiny as the buildings, since it is the physical connection that makes the power demand real.

The overlay district was designed to concentrate data centers where electrical capacity and fiber already exist. The Gardner Property sits outside that zone, so the application becomes a public test of the county's appetite for expansion. Neighbors have not softened. The Coalition to Protect Prince William County calls the project 'a bad rash that just won't go away' and warns in a newsletter that approval would bring more energy infrastructure and 'industrial blight.'

Data Center Dynamics reports that the first buildings would come online in five to seven years, matching the arrival of new power in the area. The grid, in other words, sets the schedule. The developer is betting that electricity arrives before the political mood turns.

JK Land Holdings is a familiar name in the region. Data Center Dynamics notes that the company has multiple projects in various stages of development across neighboring Loudoun County. Those projects show it knows how to move sites through Virginia's approval process, and they give the county a preview of what a Gainesville campus might look like.

The broader climate for data center siting is tightening. This week, California lawmakers advanced bills targeting data center rates and pollution, according to Private Infrastructure Daily. How Prince William County handles this application will show whether that skepticism has reached Northern Virginia.

The special use permit is the choke point. A by-right project needs only the market and the grid. This one needs a vote. The developer has shrunk the buildings, a concession that suggests it hears the opposition. The five-to-seven-year timetable suggests it is more worried about the grid than the dais. The coalition's rash metaphor works both ways. Approve it, and the project still waits on power. Reject it, and the developers can revise and refile again. Either way, the wait remains.