A developer will set up a data center campus in Wythe County to support artificial intelligence and other advanced computing services, officials said Friday.
The developer, Solis Arx, will build on a 99-acre lot in Wythe County’s Progress Park, according to a news release from the Wythe County Joint Industrial Development Authority. The project is the first data center announced for Wythe County.
Solis Arx — Latin for “fortress of the sun” — is a newly formed company created specifically for the Wythe County project, company founder and CEO Robert Noll said in an email interview.
“Solis Arx is about building long term economic value for Wythe County and the region,” Noll said. “Our goal is to create a technology campus that drives job growth, supports local businesses, and positions Southwest Virginia as a competitive hub for advanced computing. This project is designed to be a lasting economic engine for the community.”
Noll said the team behind the company has “longstanding experience in data center development, infrastructure planning, energy systems, and large scale project management.”
“The company structure is new, but the expertise is not,” he said.
Some details have yet to be finalized, such as the size of the campus itself, its anticipated construction timeline and how many construction and operation jobs it will entail.
“Further announcements related to the multi-phase deployment will be made in the near future as Solis Arx works with the county and the Commonwealth of Virginia to coordinate regulatory and permitting timelines,” the IDA said in its news release.
Solis Arx plans to remain the owner and operator of the data center campus after it’s developed. The company will lease capacity and services to long-term tenants, Noll said.
The Progress Park site provides sufficient acreage and is more than a mile away from its closest residential neighbors, the IDA said.
Furthermore, Progress Park has a “substantial amount of electrical infrastructure” served by Appalachian Power and “tremendous water assets” from the town of Wytheville, the IDA’s executive director, David Manley, said in an interview.
Manley said in the news release that Progress Park was acquired in 1999 and “has been marketed as a certified site for data center development for well over a decade.”
“This project is a great fit that will strengthen and diversify the economic base,” Manley said.
Progress Park currently is home to a Gatorade bottling and distribution plant, an Amcor plastic bottle manufacturing facility, a Somic America automotive component manufacturing plant and a Blue Star NBR factory set up to produce rubber for gloves, which has yet to begin operations.
Noll said in the news release that as the company develops the project, it is “committed to doing so with deep respect for the land, its natural resources, and the long-term preservation of what makes this region special.”
Brian Vaught, chairman of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors, said in the release that the “carefully considered, significant capital investment will strengthen Wythe County’s tax base and support long-term growth in our local economy.”
“Projects like this expand our ability to improve infrastructure and public services, such as school improvements and public safety funding, without additional tax pressure on local families,” Vaught said. “Our partnership with Solis Arx gives us confidence that this development, located in an industrial park and not in a residential area, will provide meaningful benefits for the people who call this county home.”
The IDA’s board chair, Michael Cole, touted the project’s high-tech job creation.
“Jobs such as those created by this project, while fewer than some large manufacturing projects, provide quality employment at all skill levels. For those who want to pursue information technology careers, they won’t have to look far for high tech, high wage opportunities,” Cole said.
Virginia is the world’s largest data center market, driven by the growth of AI and other online services from companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft.
Most of that development is concentrated in Northern Virginia, but not all of it is. For example, Microsoft has a data center campus in Mecklenburg County, Wise County has the Mineral Gap Data Center owned by DP Facilities and in June, officials announced that Google bought land in Botetourt County for a potential data center.
As data center growth has continued to spread, not everyone has welcomed it.
Even as Northern Virginia remains the data center capital of the world, billions of dollars in projects there have been blocked or delayed over concerns about the environment, the use of tax incentives and the cost of infrastructure.
In Southside Virginia, a developer in April withdrew a plan for a data center campus outside Chatham.
Residents resisted the effort for months, even after the developer, Balico, scaled back its original plan of 84 buildings and a power plant on 2,200 acres.
In Wise County, residents in November voted down a referendum that would have created a new local electric authority. County officials had said the authority would allow the county to work directly with large electricity customers such as data centers, which would boost economic growth.
Some residents opposed what they saw as a path for such growth that would bypass public input, while others felt they lacked sufficient information to support the referendum.