QTS terminates Prince William Digital Gateway data center project

QTS withdrew its Virginia Supreme Court appeal on July 2, 2026, ending the data center campus planned on 2,000 acres beside Manassas National Battlefield Park.

Prince William County · July 20, 2026

The Prince William Digital Gateway ended on July 2, 2026, when data center developer QTS withdrew its petition to the Virginia Supreme Court and terminated the project. At full buildout, InsideNoVa reported, the campus would have been the world's largest, with more than 22 million square feet of data centers across 2,000 acres along Pageland Lane, next to Manassas National Battlefield Park near Gainesville.

"QTS has made the decision to terminate the Digital Gateway project," the company's legal team wrote in its withdrawal notice, which also pulled its associated filings. The notice said the proposal would have brought tens of billions of dollars in capital investment to Prince William County. It also cited annual local tax revenue and thousands of long-term jobs.

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved the project's rezonings in December 2023. In August 2025, Prince William Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving ruled those rezonings void, finding the county gave improper public notice ahead of its 27-hour hearing and vote. The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld her ruling on March 31, 2026.

Two lawsuits drove the challenge, one from the Oak Valley Homeowners Association and another from the American Battlefield Trust, heard together on appeal. Prince William County withdrew from the appeals in April 2026, and co-developer Compass Datacenters ended its own appeal the same month, leaving QTS alone in defending the approvals.

American Battlefield Trust president David Duncan described the withdrawal as a vindication of the fight to keep dozens of data centers away from the national park. The Coalition to Protect Prince William, a resident group that opposed the project, announced the news to supporters the same afternoon.

Supervisors denied a second campus on July 7

Five days later, the county rejected a larger proposal nearby. On July 7, 2026, the Board of County Supervisors voted 8-0 to deny a comprehensive plan amendment for the Dulles South Innovation Center, a proposed campus of up to 43 million square feet of data centers on nearly 2,000 acres in the Gainesville District along Sanders Lane, near the Loudoun County border. The vote followed a five-hour public hearing, InsideNoVa reported.

County planning staff recommended denial, noting the land sits outside Prince William's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District. The amendment, requested by Sanders Lage Assemblage I LLC, would have shifted the long-range land use designation for about 252 parcels on roughly 1,940 acres from agriculture and forestry to industrial and mixed-use categories. Had it advanced, a rezoning from agricultural districts to a planned business district would have followed.