Lawmakers Pause Data Center Development in Maryland County in Wake of $5B Megaproject

Fierce public opposition to a $5 billion data center project in Southern Maryland has spurred local county leadership to pause all data center development within its jurisdiction.

Aisha Braveboy, Prince George’s County executive, on Monday signed an executive order temporarily freezing data center applications and permits. The Prince George’s County Council is similarly expected on Tuesday to further pause reviews and approvals of future data center projects. 

Braveboy’s order will remain in effect until a county task force studying data center development releases its findings later this year. 

The bans are effectively a response to local opposition over Brightseat Tech Park, a 4.1 million-square-foot, $5 billion data center mega-campus on the former site of Landover Mall in Landover, Md. Last week, hundreds of county residents protested plans for the project, according to NBC Washington, raising concerns about the development’s impact on public health, the environment and property values. 

Brightseat Associates, an affiliate of Lerner Enterprises and the Tower Cos., secured entitlements to build the sprawling campus late last year. Once fully operational, the site would house five data centers on roughly 87 acres with a capacity of up to 820 megawatts — automatically making it one of the highest-capacity data center campuses in the region. Lerner has said that the campus would generate nearly $54 million in annual tax revenue for the county. 

Construction on the campus was set to begin either next year or in 2027, though the sheer scale of the project has generated palpable public resistance. A recent Change.org petition, dubbed “Stop Data Center at Former Landover Mall Site,” has garnered over 20,000 signatures.  Spokespersons for the county executive and for Lerner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

“It is important to note that prior council legislation passed in 2021 allowed the project to be approved by the county planning board without going to the council for review,” the county said in a statement last week. “Under the current council leadership, the council is committed to ensuring future decisions are made with full transparency.”

Lerner has owned the property for decades, and has long grappled with what to do with the site. Most of Landover Mall was closed and demolished in the early 2000s, and it has largely sat vacant since. The property was once a finalist to be the new FBI headquarters, though was ultimately passed over. Lerner later attempted to sell the land for potential mixed-use development, but the firm decided to construct a data center instead, announcing the plans in 2023. 

Investors and developers have flooded the market to take advantage of tech-driven data center demand, particularly in nearby Northern Virginia. Due to its proximity to robust fiber optic infrastructure and Washington, D.C., NoVA has become the nationwide leader in data center buildouts in recent years, with hundreds of sprawling facilities across Prince William, Loudoun and Fairfax counties in particular. Yet the scale of the facilities, proximity to residential neighborhoods and their power and water consumption have divided locals.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors last year, for example, approved a zoning ordinance limiting where and how data centers can be built. In some county districts, data centers are now limited to 80,000 square feet, and must be located a minimum of 200 feet from residential areas.

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