A trial in a lawsuit challenging the PW Digital Gateway data center project, originally set to end Friday, is now set to close Monday.
This article was written by WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
A scheduled four-day trial in a lawsuit challenging the PW Digital Gateway data center project, originally set to end Friday, was extended to a fifth day and is now set to close Monday.
The lawsuit involves the Oak Valley Homeowners’ Association and 11 individual plaintiffs, all Gainesville-area residents.
Tension was palpable right from the outset Friday morning as Circuit Court Judge Kimberly A. Irving had the opportunity to dismiss the plaintiffs’ case entirely following a Thursday motion to strike on the part of the defense.
Defendants in the suit are the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and two developers involved with Digital Gateway, H & H Capital Acquisitions and GW Acquisition Co. At full build out, the Digital Gateway near Gainesville would be the largest data center corridor in the world, with over 22 million square feet of data centers spread out across over 2,100 acres in western Prince William.
Irving ultimately denied the motion to strike, ruling the plaintiffs do indeed have standing — signifying they each suffered a “particularized harm” and were in fact in “close proximity” to the rezoning at hand.
The plaintiffs are hoping to halt the Digital Gateway project and have the board’s decision be declared void due to an alleged violation of state law and county zoning ordinance.
On Friday, Christopher Wall, an attorney and plaintiff assisting the Oak Valley homeowners’ principal attorneys, Craig Blakeley and Kathleen McDermott, as a self-described “plaintiff liaison,” told InsideNoVa their objective is clear.
“Re-notice, re-hear, re-vote,” Wall said of the plaintiffs’ hopes for the Digital Gateway.
Mark Looney, an attorney representing H & H Capital Acquisitions, an affiliate of Compass Datacenters, declined to comment for this story.
In denying the motion to strike, Irving specifically cited the standard established in the 2023 Virginia Supreme Court case
Morgan v. Board of Supervisors of Hanover County, whereby plaintiffs were found to have standing even prior to the harm occurring from the construction of a Wegmans warehouse facility — overturning a Circuit Court ruling that deemed the harm only speculative.
The Morgan case, Irving said, is comparable to the Oak Valley data center suit in that both involved a rezoning from agricultural land to industrial business purposes. She established a key differentiation between the Morgan precedent and the 2013 case Friends of the Rappahannock v. Caroline County Board of Supervisors, also from the Virginia Supreme Court.
Due to the scale and length of data center construction — estimated at 10 to 15 years, according to Blakeley — Irving ruled the plaintiffs possess enough “skin in the game” to merit standing and that speculative harm can apply in certain situations.
One footnote in that regard was that Roger Yackel and John Hermansen, two plaintiffs who were not available to testify this week, were dismissed due to an ensuing lack of standing.
As a result of Irving’s denial, the trial proceeded to the defense’s case, whereupon the defense called its witnesses to the stand on the crucial issue of actual notice.
The PW Digital Gateway project would include 37 data centers overall, roughly the size of 144 Walmart supercenters. There are three separate rezonings involved: Digital Gateway North, Digital Gateway South and the Compass property.
First up was Michael Kitchen, an engineer and senior principal with IMEG — who worked exclusively on the Digital Gateway North and South properties. Kitchen said the county instructed him to post 73 double-sided notice signs for Digital Gateway North and 24 for Digital Gateway South near the planned data center campus. Kitchen said driving up and down Pageland Lane prior to the December 2023 Digital Gateway public hearing was “like a picket fence of signs” — and defense attorneys submitted several 24×36 signs as exhibits into evidence.
The defense’s second witness was Ryan David, a 27-year employee of Irvin Engineering Associates who was involved in the Compass application for the Digital Gateway and produced approximately 147 sign locations front and back, according to his testimony.
Asked about his team’s approach to the project, David said “a lot of attention was going to this” and added the whole team would often “huddle up,” monitoring signs several days a week.
The defense then entered depositions from three Washington Post employees as exhibits for Irving to read. The employees are Carmen Alianza-Javier, Brenda Barbee and Bryan Pokusa.
Earlier this week, Andrea Madden, clerk to the Board of County Supervisors, testified as to some confusion regarding December 2023 email exchanges with Barbee on the timing of public notice advertisements for the Digital Gateway public hearing.
Barbee had temporarily substituted for Alianza-Javier, an account executive for The Post, during the weeks prior to the public hearing. According to a copy of Barbee’s pre-trial deposition entered into the public record and viewed by InsideNoVa, Barbee did not recall many elements of her December 2023 communications with Madden.
The plaintiffs’ argument revolves around two questions: whether the timing of the county’s Digital Gateway public hearing advertisements in The Washington Post complied with Virginia statute or county ordinance for proper notice and whether materials relevant to the application were made available to the public at the time of the initial ad.
The Digital Gateway ads ultimately ran on Dec. 2, 5 and 9, 2023, prior to the Board of County Supervisors’ public hearing and vote on the Digital Gateway on Dec. 12 and 13.
In the final stages of Friday’s session, Blakeley called a rebuttal witness, Michael Donegan, to counter the defense’s reading of further depositions — which pertained largely to email exchanges between Wall and the plaintiffs, as well as their resulting impact on the notice issue — but ultimately concluded the questioning early due to time constraints.
Blakeley said he would call a final witness via videoconference testimony on Monday and potentially Jose Medina, another plaintiff who has already testified.
Irving wrapped up on Friday by requesting written closing arguments from each side, stating her view that the defense’s three separate parties — the Board of County Supervisors, H & H Capital Acquisitions and GW Acquisition Co. — did not necessarily form one harmonious defense and would be best served by submitting closings in writing.
According to Irving, there will be a recess after Monday, whereupon the two sides will submit their closing arguments as de facto pre-trial briefs before waiting “a week or two” for a final hearing during which she will deliver her ruling.
Monday’s session will start at 10 a.m.
