Case Study: Pittsylvania County — The County Turned Down One Data Center Plan, Then Rezoned for a Bigger One
In April 2025 Pittsylvania County refused to rezone 763 acres for a private gas plant and data centers. Nine months later the same board made data centers by right on 3,500 acres at the Berry Hill megasite, in a district whose text says the county's own data-center standard does not apply there. Within eight weeks the regional industrial authority had approved a sale contract defining the buyer's project as no less than 3,300 megawatts with onsite gas generation. Noise: 52 dBA offered by the refused applicant, 77 dBA adopted, and that only beside residential zoning.
In April 2025 Pittsylvania County, Virginia refused to rezone 763 acres for a private gas plant and data centers. Nine months later the same Board of Supervisors made data centers by right on 3,500 acres at the Berry Hill megasite that already permitted private power plants, in a district whose text says the county's own data center standard does not apply there. Within eight weeks the county's regional industrial authority had approved a sale contract defining the buyer's project as no less than 3,300 megawatts of data center capacity with onsite gas generation.
The case study follows both decisions through the primary record: county packets, minutes and ordinances, the regional industrial facility authority's resolutions, purchase agreement form and executed performance agreement, Danville's council and utility commission minutes, State Corporation Commission dockets, and meeting video. It sets the district's substitute standard against the county's 2024 data center section and against the refused applicant's proffers, including noise (52 dBA offered, 77 dBA adopted, and that only beside residential zoning), and documents the August 2026 site assessment for large electricity users that exempts the megasite district from most of its requirements. On the utility side it traces the Berry Hill loop and substation, built by Appalachian Power under the business park pilot statute that deems need met once the state's economic development agency approves a park; the company's flat forecasts against 24,881 megawatts of load in inquiry; and the four utilities whose territories divide the county's two sites. It closes by placing the sequence, refusal and then entitlement by ordinance on the county's own motion, against the five-posture typology of Governing the Demand Shock.
Evidence snapshot: 25 September 2026.
Disclosure: The author serves on the advisory board of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded Emory University study of data center expansion in Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, a seat accepted July 9, 2026 that carries a one-time honorarium. He advises that study and is not a member of its research team; one endnote quotes the study's proposal, and nothing here reports the study's work. No part of this work was funded by the Sloan Foundation, by Emory University, or by any party named in it.