The Future of the Piedmont Foundation is a coalition of business and civic leaders working to promote sustainable economic development and job creation across Danville and Pittsylvania County. Sen. Louise Lucas brought her data center listening tour to Danville last week, and we listened closely, alongside residents, to the concerns raised about jobs, water, electricity and transparency. Those concerns deserve real answers. As the General Assembly takes up data center policy in the months ahead, we want to put the regional business community’s perspective on the record: on the Berry Hill project specifically, here are those answers.
Jobs. Sens. Lucas and Locke told residents the 2,500 jobs at Berry Hill are mostly temporary construction work, leaving only 25 to 50 permanent positions. That contradicts the performance agreement itself, which defines those jobs as “new permanent full-time employment,” and requires 2,500 new permanent full-time employees, and Stack has stated that construction employment could reach up to 4,000 workers at peak activity. The agreement also carries repayment provisions if the company doesn’t deliver. That’s not a promise. It’s a contract.
The tax exemption. This isn’t a special carve-out invented for data centers. Virginia has long recognized that taxing the productive equipment businesses rely on makes the commonwealth less competitive. That’s why manufacturers receive a sales and use tax exemption on production equipment. As Virginia’s economy has evolved, the commonwealth adopted a similar policy for qualifying data center equipment because digital infrastructure has become another form of critical production investment. Thirty-four states offer a version of it, including every state on Virginia’s border. Several offer more, covering electricity or construction materials outright. Virginia’s version comes with tighter strings attached: investment and wage thresholds, annual reporting, and clawback if commitments aren’t met.
And this isn’t a one-time incentive that locks companies in once they arrive. Data centers buy and refresh equipment continuously. Competitiveness has to hold up every year, not just on the day a deal is signed.
The state added a new energy consumption tax this year on top of preserving the exemption, which will be worth watching closely: stack enough new costs on top of a policy built to stay competitive, and eventually it stops being competitive. Virginia doesn’t need to find out the hard way.
The money. Locke cited $1.9 billion a year as the cost of the exemption, framed as funding lost to Medicaid, schools and childcare. But Department of Taxation figures show data centers generated $5.34 billion in state and local taxes in 2024-25 alone, nearly three times that cost in the same year. JLARC estimates the industry contributes $9.1 billion to Virginia’s GDP and $5.5 billion in labor income annually, supporting roughly 74,000 jobs. The state’s own analysis found that about 90% of that investment likely wouldn’t happen here at all without the exemption. Remove it, and Virginia doesn’t gain $1.9 billion for other priorities. It loses far more than that, because the investment goes to a state that still offers the deal.
Water and power. JLARC found data centers statewide account for less than half a percent of Virginia’s total water withdrawals, and that a typical individual facility uses about as much water as a single large office building. Danville’s own water availability study confirmed more than sufficient capacity for this project, whose closed-loop cooling design uses less than most facilities its size. On electricity, JLARC found data centers are paying the full cost of the service they use, and separate research has found added demand has tended to push average retail prices down, not up.
Local control. No data center gets built in Virginia without local approval. Berry Hill wasn’t identified after a deal was already moving. It was designated for large-scale industrial use through years of public planning, specifically because it’s built for investment at this scale. The localities take on no incentive costs of their own and are projected to collect $2.5 billion to $3.3 billion in revenue over 20 years.
Southern Virginia spent two decades building the capacity to compete for an investment like this. The state should honor the terms that brought it here, not chip away at them one tax at a time.
Jeff Haley is chairman of the Future of the Piedmont Foundation.
