Amazon Pays $195M for NoVA Site, Seeks Data Center Development Approval

Amazon is reportedly pausing some of its data center lease deals around the world, but that hasn’t stopped the tech conglomerate from purchasing more land to develop its own.

An Amazon affiliate has paid $195 million to Luck Stone, a Virginia-based quarry operator, for 97 acres just south of Leesburg, in Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County. The Business Journals first reported news of the deal, which amounts to about $2 million per acre. Yet Amazon still has to roll up its sleeves on the paperwork side of things before it can start building on the land.

Luck Stone had attempted to rezone the land for data center development since 2023, when one of its affiliates applied to build 1.7 million square feet of data centers across four buildings there, per the Business Journals. Representatives for Luck Stone did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

“We are constantly evaluating new locations based on customer demand,” an Amazon spokesperson told Commercial Observer in an emailed statement.

Loudoun County lawmakers have yet to approve the designation. Indeed, staff of the Loudoun County Planning Commission argued against approval at a commission meeting last month, claiming that the entitlement application “does not adequately mitigate visual or environmental impacts.”

Building a sprawling data center site these days in Loudoun County — which contains the highest concentration of such sites in the country, if not the world — is no simple task. County supervisors in March eliminated Loudoun’s by-right data center development clause, except for about 21 projects that had submitted site plans before Feb. 12, meaning that all new projects in Loudoun must now receive direct approval from the county. A site plan for Amazon’s new property does not appear to have been submitted.

Loudoun County’s move echoes that of nearby Fairfax County, which in September introduced a new ordinance that limits where and how data centers can be developed. Both rule changes come after years of mounting public pressure to regulate the megaprojects, due to the sheer number and size of the developments in Northern Virginia, never mind their electricity use. 

Amazon, for its part, is betting big on data centers. The company’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced in 2023 that it would spend $35 billion on such facilities in Virginia through 2040 — a promise it has so far followed through on. Amazon paid $57 million for a 39-acre site in Manassas in September, following a $218 million deal for 91 acres there last May and $152 million for 140 acres in January. AWS currently manages about 9 gigawatts of capacity, with another 23 gigawatts on the way in the long term. 

About 70 percent of that portfolio is owned by Amazon. However, the company is halting an undisclosed number of data center deals as it “digests” its recent lease-ups, according to an April report by Wells Fargo. Yet such periods aren’t uncommon for hyperscale data center tenants, per Wells Fargo, as they evaluate their space needs following elevated activity.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.