Midas

By Charles Houston

Eons ago in Asa Minor, King Midas was in his rose garden when he came across the wise satyr Silenus, badly hungover and still somewhat drunk. Midas helped Silenus clear his head, fed him and returned him to the Greek god Dionysos, the satyr’s master. (Satyrs had the body of a man, the ears and tail of a horse, and notable priapism.)

The grateful god gave Midas a single wish.

The pleonectic Midas asked for the ability to turn anything he touched into gold. As the myth goes, Midas got his comeuppance when a grape turned to gold as he tried to eat it. His horse became the gilt metal when Midas tried to mount it. Even water turned into gold before Midas could drink. Ultimately Midas had to beg Dionysos to reverse the spell.

Relevance

The message is obvious: Be careful what you wish for. A corollary is beware of unforeseen consequences. Both are at play in Loudoun’s raging debate about data centers. 

In the Beginning …

Many years ago my firm sent me on a scouting mission to northern Virginia to see if we wanted to develop office buildings here. Two experienced realtors showed me around. One said something I well remember, “You ought to look at Loudoun County. It’s headed by a really dumb woman who’ll approve anything.” That was intriguing, but it was clear that developing large office buildings in Loudoun would be foolish.

In some ways that Chairwoman was clever. Times were tough and places like Loudoun needed all the economic activity they could generate. The problem was that nobody ever turned off the spigot of more growth, more growth, more growth. The Midas touch indeed.

The Internet Arrives

Sorry, AL Gore, you did not create the Internet. It evolved from academic and military sources, dating back to the 1950s. The Internet as we know it took form in 1983. Loudoun became the locus of the Internet with the founding here of AOL and other companies such as UUNET and WorldCom. They spawned a great network of wires, connections and such. As the Internet grew, more and more data infrastructure was added to the major hub that Loudoun had become.

The Internet Thrives

I think of it as a connection for communication and for transmittal of data, and data needs to be stored. Thus, data centers were built to house innumerable servers holding incomprehensible amounts of data. They quickly took the form of giant, multi-story warehouses and they multiplied. They don’t pollute. With few employees they don’t aggravate rush hour. They pay a boatload of taxes. What could go wrong?

Plenty. Just ask Midas.

Perhaps they do pollute in some way. Perhaps they loom over neighborhoods, even shutting off sunlight to some homes. Perhaps their generators are noisy and their lights are too bright. For those and other reasons, citizens are up in arms. I’ve never seen such widespread community rage.

Buddy Arrives

The County established a Department of Economic Development and selected super-salesman Buddy Rizer to head it. Buddy and his team were excellent at their job of bringing businesses to Loudoun, and it was easy to focus on data centers since no other location could match Loudoun’s robust infrastructure. 

Data centers were – are – low-hanging fruit for Buddy and his boys. We have 27 million square feet of them now, in 115 buildings, and at least 4 million square feet more in the pipeline. The existing centers pay some $600 million in taxes. 

“Where does all that money go?” leads to long discussions on spending policy by the Board of Supervisors. That’s a topic for another time and place. Similarly, are we becoming too dependent on one industry? 

Our Goal

I think it’s simple: We want more data centers until they become a problem, and some are already problematic. That’s a clear statement of the issue, but what does it mean in real terms? I cannot think of a quantitative measure of what constitutes a problem, but that doesn’t matter. I see a way forward.

Change zoning to require that any new data center, wherever it may be, require a Special Exception by the Board of Supervisors. In addition to complying with the prescriptive zoning requirements, the Board can look at a proposed project in context and begin by deciding whether the location is appropriate. The Board can also consider the architecture, landscaping, generator placement and so on as part of its evaluation.

If the data center promoters fight this, then up the ante: Simply change zoning to ban any new ones. The Supervisors hold the high cards and just have to use them.

It also goes without saying that the new zoning ordinance should be full of prescriptive and proscribed measures to mitigate data center impacts.  The new zoning ordinance is a step in that direction, but more controls are needed.

 A New (but unfinished) Zoning Ordinance

On December 13 the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the new zoning ordinance, many hundreds of pages long. The process seemed endless but plaudits to the Supervisors for their vote.

But … the most contentious issues were deferred until 2024. Battles will erupt over many topics important to western Loudoun, from protecting prime agricultural soils to fixing the problems with cluster subdivisions, to dealing with the metastasis of breweries and their ilk. The countywide problem with data centers and transmission lines will be explosive.

Scores of citizens spoke during the Board’s meeting on December 13. They were supposed to stay on point, commenting only about the zoning ordinance. Instead, probably 90% of the speakers railed against data centers and the huge transmission lines they require.

As the Board faces this anger next year, it should remember Article 1, section 2 of Virginia’s constitution: “That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.”

Charles Houston developed office buildings for an Atlanta-based firm. Its portfolio included data centers for Gulf Oil, AT&T and Norfolk & Western. They were primitive by today’s standards.