Table of Contents
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City Council has formally asked Fairfax County to reject the electrical substation that would power a data center campus proposed just beyond the city's western border, arguing that the project's effects will not stop at the county line.
In a letter dated Aug. 3 and addressed to the Fairfax County Planning Commission, Mayor Alyia Gaskins wrote on behalf of the council and city residents to request denial of the Edsall Data Center Substation 2232 application.
"The incompatibility of heavy industrial use in such proximity to a densely populated area of Alexandria residents is a clear and compelling reason to not support this application," Gaskins wrote.
The letter is careful about jurisdiction. Gaskins wrote that the city respects the authority of individual jurisdictions to make their own land use decisions, but that the council "felt the need to weigh in given the number of residences in the City of Alexandria that border the proposed data center and substation."
What is being proposed
Starwood Capital Group is planning a data center campus on the 34-acre Plaza 500 site at 6299 Edsall Road in the Lincolnia area of Fairfax County, immediately west of Alexandria. The developer, which operates the project as Starwood Digital Ventures, filed a permit application and building plans with the county on July 16 for Plaza 500 South, the first of two buildings.
That first building would be two stories, 226,469 square feet and 75 feet tall, designed by the Dallas architecture firm HKS Inc., the Washington Business Journal reported. County records put the estimated cost of the phase one shell at $5 million. A Starwood affiliate bought the property, next to the Bren Mar neighborhood, for $165 million in 2022.
The data center itself is permitted by right under the site's industrial zoning, meaning it does not require a public hearing or a vote by the Fairfax County Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors. The campus cannot operate, however, without a major new electrical supply — and that is where the public process lives.
Dominion Energy's proposed Edsall Road substation received approval from Virginia's State Corporation Commission in August 2025. It still must clear a public facility review under Section 15.2-2232 of the Virginia code, which asks whether the location and extent of a utility facility are in substantial accord with the county's comprehensive plan.
That review is the one formal opening for residents and elected officials to challenge the project. The Mason District Land Use Advisory Committee is scheduled to make its recommendation Sept. 22, and the Planning Commission is set to hold its public hearing and vote at 7 p.m. Sept. 24 in the Board Auditorium of the Fairfax County Government Center, 12000 Government Center Parkway. Dominion would have the right to appeal a denial to the Board of Supervisors.
The city's objections
Gaskins' letter goes beyond the substation itself to the transmission infrastructure required to serve it. The Edsall 230-kilovolt electric transmission project would run an overhead line roughly a mile west and south of the site to connect to the existing Van Dorn substation, carried by eight or nine towers averaging 123 feet in height within a 100-foot-wide cleared right-of-way, according to the letter. The letter says that right-of-way crosses resource protection areas for Backlick Run and Turkeycock Run.
The letter also raises air quality. Because data centers run continuously, Gaskins wrote, emergency diesel generators are engaged when grid service dips below a set threshold, and those generators can release fine particulates and nitrogen oxides.
On health, the letter reports that residents living near substations have described headaches, vertigo, nausea, difficulty sleeping, ear pain and hypertension, and says those effects could be associated with low-frequency sound below the range of normal human hearing — sound that, it notes, is generally not covered by local noise ordinances or air quality standards. The letter attributes those accounts to resident reports and does not cite specific studies.
Gaskins closed by invoking the two jurisdictions' shared planning history, noting that Alexandria and Fairfax County worked together on the Eisenhower West Small Area Plan in 2015 and that city planning staff coordinated with county staff on land use in the plan area next to Plaza 500.
"We trust that the concerns of Alexandrians are considered like you would for Fairfax County residents," she wrote.
A widening coalition
The council's letter lands amid mounting pressure on the county. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., whose 8th District includes both the site and Alexandria, wrote to the Planning Commission on July 30 urging denial, citing concerns about land use, flooding, lighting and noise, and whether the proposal fits the growth envisioned for Lincolnia.
Beyer argued that Fairfax County's own guidelines are meant to limit the effects of data center infrastructure on neighborhoods while preserving land for housing, economic opportunity and transit-oriented development, and said he shares residents' view that the substation does not align with those goals. Data center infrastructure, he wrote, should not be built in residential areas where its scale is "fundamentally incompatible" with adjacent neighborhoods.
Organized opposition has come primarily from the Save Bren Mar Coalition, founded by Bren Pointe Homeowners Association President Tyler Ray, which says it has drawn support from five homeowner and civic associations representing roughly 1,000 homes. Ray has said the substation would sit 67 feet from the nearest residential use, the Ridges at Edsall townhouse community, and told FFXnow that residents of Alexandria's Watergate condominiums have joined the effort.
More than 100 residents attended a July 28 Dominion Energy briefing to the Mason District committee, where about 30 people spoke.
Opponents have also objected to the order of events. Starwood filed its building plans before the substation cleared its review, which Ray told the Washington Business Journal amounts to "manipulating the process and going out of order intentionally." Starwood declined to comment to that publication.
Earlier this year, residents asked Fairfax County to swap the Plaza 500 site for a county-owned property in Chantilly that it is selling to Starwood for data center development, and to build affordable housing next to Bren Mar instead. County officials declined, and the Business Journal reported the $167 million Chantilly sale is expected to close in spring 2027.
The proximity to Alexandria's own development plans has been part of the argument. The Landmark Mall site, where the city is building out a mixed-use district with housing, parks and a new Inova hospital campus, sits a short distance east of Plaza 500.
Dominion Energy has said the substation and transmission lines are needed to meet the data center's electrical load and to connect the site to the existing Van Dorn substation. A Dominion spokesperson told WJLA-TV that the utility received a request to provide electric service for the Plaza 500 development and, as with any such request, is evaluating what infrastructure is needed to keep service safe and reliable.
A spokesperson for Starwood Digital Ventures, the site's developer, told the station that the company has made a long-term investment in Fairfax County and described the substation as "designed to strengthen power reliability for essential services, small businesses, and residents" in the surrounding community. The spokesperson said the company remains committed to engaging with the county and its residents as the review continues.
Fairfax County Supervisor Andres Jimenez, whose Mason District includes the site, said in a statement to the station that all stakeholders should have an opportunity to be heard and that staff should evaluate the proposal against the county's adopted ordinance and applicable regulations. He did not take a position on the application.
A federal debate over the same questions
The Edsall Road fight is playing out as Congress begins to take up the questions it raises. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat and Alexandria resident, introduced a package of artificial intelligence legislation in July that includes federal minimum standards for data centers — among them requirements that facilities maintain setbacks from residential neighborhoods, use clean backup power, meet water use standards and avoid adding to consumers' electric bills.
Warner's Data Center Tax Accountability and Disclosure Act would also require large data centers to publicly disclose energy and water consumption, emissions and backup power generation, and would condition a federal tax benefit on meeting efficiency standards. He has argued that communities are often kept from knowing what their local governments have agreed to, and has called for nondisclosure agreements tied to data center deals to be made public.
Warner has not weighed in on the Edsall Road application. But the standards he has proposed — setbacks from homes, cleaner backup generation, disclosure of what a project will consume — track closely with the objections Alexandria's council raised in its letter. Warner said last week that he found the chief executives of Nvidia and OpenAI receptive to the idea of minimum federal standards, telling reporters that public sentiment is turning against AI faster than the industry expected.
What happens next
The Mason District Land Use Advisory Committee meets at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 22 to vote on a recommendation. The recommendation is advisory and does not bind the Planning Commission.
The Planning Commission holds the public hearing and votes at 7 p.m. Sept. 24 in the Board Auditorium of the Fairfax County Government Center, 12000 Government Center Parkway in Fairfax. The hearing will be carried on Fairfax County Government Channel 16 and streamed online. Residents may sign up to speak, and the commission accepts written comment in advance — including from people who live outside Fairfax County.
A vote either way is unlikely to end the matter. If the commission denies the application, Dominion Energy can appeal to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which has overruled Planning Commission recommendations on data center and substation rules before. If the commission approves it, the substation proceeds toward a construction timeline Dominion has aimed at completing in October 2027.
The data center is on a separate track. Because the buildings are permitted by right, Starwood's site and building plans move through county land development review regardless of what happens Sept. 24 — though the campus cannot operate without the power the substation would deliver. Opponents are betting that denying the substation stalls the project; Ray has said he hopes a denial would push the developer toward housing and mixed-use plans instead.
Alexandria has no vote in any of it. The council's letter, like Beyer's, is a request.
