Skip to main content

More data centers for Prince William County’s Innovation Park

By Jeff Clabaugh

WASHINGTON — Loudoun County, Virginia might be the region’s leader in data centers, but Prince William County continues to land new projects, with two more in the works at Innovation Park.

A division of Columbia, Maryland-based Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) has begun construction on the first of two data centers at Innovation Park, anchored by George Mason University’s Prince William Campus. Many companies that have located to Innovation Park have collaborative relationships with the university’s researchers.

“Prince William County is a good choice for COPT to expand because of the abundant availability of land, power and low latency fiber connectivity found within Innovation Park, ” said COPT chief executive Steve Budorick. “The county is a good partner in supporting out service delivery to our customers.”

The COPT affiliate purchased the land from the county in 2015, though it delayed building without tenant commitments. COPT did not say if it had secured a tenant for the Innovation Park data centers. It has a current partnership with Amazon Web Services to build data centers in Sterling.

The first of the two COPT data centers is scheduled for competition by July 2019.

Prince William County’s strategy to aggressively pursue the data storage industry continues to pay off. To date, the county has logged 34 data center projects amounting to $6.9 billion in capital investment, and close to 1,000 new jobs.

The county’s Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District has more than 10,000 acres designated for commercial data center development. It also has the lowest computer tax rates in the region.

Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in North America, with more than 30 percent market share, according to JLL. Loudoun County leads the region’s data center concentration with more than 75 centers and 10 million square feet either operational or under development.

Northern Virginia did lose out on a major data deal last year, when Facebook chose the Richmond area for a $750 million data center.

Massachusetts court hears arguments in lawsuit alleging Meta designed apps to be addictive to kids

By The Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts' highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state's lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2023 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. “We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state's claim has nothing to do the company's algorithms or failure to moderate content. Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit “would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions” and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment.
Read Next Story

Related News

US applications for jobless benefits, a proxy for layoffs, tick down to 209,000 last week.

Dow to cut about 4,500 jobs as emphasis shifts to AI and automation

Tesla made smallest annual profit since the pandemic, plans to spend big on robotaxis and robots