A developer plans to build a large data center complex in eastern Wythe County, off Interstate 81 near the Pulaski County line.
The project by Charlotte, North Carolina-based TAC Data Centers would require more than a gigawatt — 1,000 megawatts — of power capacity and would consist of about nine to 11 buildings totaling 3.5 million to 4 million square feet on approximately 1,000 acres.
The site, owned by the Rogg Partnership, is just southeast of I-81 and about 10 miles east of the town of Wytheville. There are homes to the west, businesses across the highway to the northwest and Pulaski County to the east.
TAC chose the location because of its proximity to the highway and to high-voltage, 765-kilovolt electric transmission lines, and because of the company’s goals of minimizing traffic on local roads and keeping the project separated from residential areas.
“Wythe County’s location, infrastructure, and forward-looking leadership made this an obvious place to invest,” Bryan Durrett, general counsel for TAC Data Centers, said in a statement.
“We’ve designed this campus from the start around being a good neighbor — minimal traffic, minimal visual impact, minimal noise, and minimal water use — while delivering the kind of long-term tax base that funds schools and services for generations.”
Virginia is the world’s largest data center market, with much of the development concentrated in Northern Virginia. In recent years, Southwest and Southside Virginia have seen new data center projects proposed as developers seek advantages such as cheaper land and lower taxes.
This would be the second data center project announced for Wythe County, a Southwest Virginia locality with a population of approximately 28,000. A company called Solis Arx plans to develop a 99-acre lot in the county’s Progress Park to support artificial intelligence and other advanced computing.
Other projects recently announced in Southwest and Southside Virginia include a Google data center in Botetourt County, a complex in Wise County and a Stack Infrastructure development in Pittsylvania County.
Data center developers often face community pushback about electricity and water usage, air pollution, noise levels and visual impacts. For example, at a December meeting of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors, residents expressed concerns about the Solis Arx project’s potential effect on the county’s utilities and rural environment.
TAC’s project will not require rezoning approval from the county board of supervisors because Wythe County is one of a handful of counties in Virginia that do not have zoning. The project will require local building permits and state environmental permits.
County officials have been drafting a zoning ordinance for possible adoption. They have cited reasons including “growth pressures along interstates and in key development corridors” and “concerns about the size and location of solar farms, data centers, and other large-scale projects.”
County Administrator Stephen Bear said that the county “looks forward to working with TAC Data Centers as they develop their project in Wythe County and bring full-time jobs to our area.”
“This private development will bring additional tax revenue to the county which will support meaningful investments in, but not limited to, school construction, law enforcement, emergency services, and infrastructure development,” Bear said in an email.
TAC said that it intends to be a “responsible corporate citizen and long-term community partner.”
TAC Data Centers is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based The Ardent Companies, a private equity real estate investment and development firm. TAC has other projects in Charlotte and Northern Virginia, according to its website.
Water and electricity
The company said its Wythe County data centers will use “a small fraction of the water of older facilities, and the project’s cooling approach is being engineered specifically to limit demand on local water resources.”
Assuming an average home uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month, TAC’s requirement of at least a gigawatt of power capacity would be enough to supply approximately 730,000 average homes.
The location is in Appalachian Power’s service territory. The utility said in a statement that it “has a responsibility to serve customers, and that includes working with large energy users that want to connect to our system and ensuring their costs are not passed on to existing customers.”
“We are working with those customers to understand how much power they may need, when they may need it and what infrastructure would be required to serve them while maintaining reliability for all customers,” the company said.
Appalachian Power recently completed a regulatory case before Virginia’s State Corporation Commission that will establish requirements for newer customers requiring at least 100 megawatts of capacity individually or 150 megawatts aggregated. They include multiyear commitments with minimum billing amounts.
TAC plans to have on-site diesel-powered backup generators, a feature found at many data centers, and will file with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for the necessary air permits. The company said its “modern, low-emission” generators would operate only during emergencies and routine testing.
Setbacks, lighting, noise and taxes
TAC said it will use single-story buildings set back from the property lines, with vegetation and landscaping around the perimeter for screening.
Exterior lighting will be designed to minimize light pollution with “full cut-off, downward-directed fixtures, warm color temperatures, and motion-activated or reduced lighting during overnight hours wherever consistent with site safety and security requirements,” the company said.
TAC said the data center complex “will be designed for low-noise, around-the-clock operation, with noise levels at the property lines designed to remain within or below standards typical of comparable commercial and industrial uses.”
The company said in a statement that the project will bring “several times the County’s current annual property tax revenue.” Specifics remain unclear, but that suggests tens of millions of dollars per year.
The company said that it will create “several thousand” construction jobs and the data center complex’s operations will provide 150 to 200 “long-term, high-wage permanent jobs.”
TAC anticipates having the first half of the complex online in 2029 and the second half completed by 2031 or 2032.
