Take a deep breath

 

Goochland announced last week that a pre application has been filed for Tuckahoe Technology Park, a multi building data center campus on 871.89 acres between Hockett Road, West Creek, and Rt. 288. The land in question, referred to as TOD West, not part of West Creek, consists of 13 separate parcels whose owners include Forth Estate, LLC., Stern Arenstein Properties, Inc., Tuckahoe Group LLC., and Dr. Sheppard, LLC. These entities have owned the land for decades if not generations.

Owners of TOD west have had a contentious relationship with the various—there have been at least three—owners of West Creek since its creation almost 40 years ago about access to internal roads in the business park. The latest skirmish occurred about a year ago when the county granted Mosaic permission to add three lots near the intersection of Mosaic Creek Boulevard and Broad Branch Road preventing access to West Creek roads from the landlocked parcels.

The county has created a website specifically for the project at https://www.goochlandva.us/1480/Tuckahoe-Technology-Park to help citizens understand the proposal. There are many details to unpack here. Please take the time to review each part of the application, especially the parts about water usage, which will come from the TCSD, not ground water.

TOD west was added to the TOD/TZ footprint in the late stages of last year’s debate on the topic. It adjoins Mosaic, the 55+ community in the West Creek business park. Unlike other parcels included in the TOD, zoned M-1, land in TOD west is zoned either A-2 or R-3, which under TOD rules requires obtaining a conditional use permit (CUP) to build a data center.

The CUP process, which is very similar to rezoning, mandates at least one public community meeting where the applicant explains the proposed project, answers questions, and obtains feedback, which ideally is used to improve the proposal. The application then goes to the planning commission for a public hearing and recommendation and to the board of supervisors for final determination.  This means that every facet of the application will have a thorough and public review. It is likely that the final version of the Tuckahoe Technology Park, if approved, will be different from that in the pre-app.

Since the TOD concept was announced last summer, virulent anti-data center rhetoric has flooded social media and other forums. The frenzied opposition is reminiscent of the fear mongering that had the world sheltering in place, wearing useless masks, and disinfecting everything during Covid. A lawsuit seeking to void the TOD is working its way through the courts.

Goochland seems to have its own chapter of the national anti-data center movement whose members spend every waking moment mining the internet—made possible by data centers—for the latest "study” documenting their harmful effects. They ignore anything that contradicts this narrative and use an “I’m right and you’re evil” mindset to shut down conversations vaguely resembling civil dialog on the topic.

Who benefits if America stops building data centers? Opponents answer in loud lockstep that the world will be a better place without them. Their comments are consistent and carefully curated to support the thesis that data centers destroy land, water, poison the air, ruin wildlife habitat, and cause all sorts of mayhem.

Data centers are an integral part of our daily lives enabling everything from sensitive financial transactions to cat videos, they’re not going away. Are foreign bad actors planting these seeds of negativity with a flood of “facts” to convince naive Americans to oppose data centers them so they can control our lives and corner the AI market to stifle innovation? Ceding data center construction to foreign powers puts our national security at risk.

Goochland needs more revenue to provide high quality government services without raising tax rates. Homes do not pay their way tax wise. We must be able to pay our deputies, fire-rescue providers and teachers well, so they are not tempted to go elsewhere for more money. Our county has enormous capital needs, including a new courthouse, schools, and parks that cannot be funded with fairy dust.

Anti data center conspiracy theorists ignore Goochland’s long-held land use strategy to confine economic development in the designated growth area, east of Hockett Road, and leave the rest of the county rural.

Their rumor mill now contends that because M-1 zoning allows data centers by right (the Tuckahoe Tech Park is zoned A-2 and R-3) every morsel of land zoned M-1 anywhere in the county will soon sprout a data center. The new county utility master plan, for instance, found that bringing public water to the Oilville I64 exit, which is ripe for economic development, was cost prohibitive. No water, no data center.

What else could be built on the heavily wooded almost 900 acres, which will be developed at some point. Maybe thousands of apartments or hundreds of houses, which would clear cut all the trees and displace wildlife. That many dwelling units would dramatically increase the need for capital projects like schools, fire-rescue, law enforcement, parks, roads, and public utilities without any way to pay for them except raising tax rates.  A solar collection facility, they’re not farms, would deforest the land and increase the temperature nearby. The Tech Park as proposed clears a relatively small part of the acreage, leaving the rest undisturbed.

Data centers are not potato chips. Perhaps Goochland can eat just one to nourish our bottom line.