Taylor Frazier McCollum remembers when Landover Mall in her Prince George’s County neighborhood was a staple in family moments.
It was the place where she felt safe trick-or-treating and costuming for the mall’s annual Halloween party. She can still taste the salt and heat from fresh Boardwalk Fries. Somewhere in her home, she said, are old buttons from a mall kiosk that offered the fun of printing a picture on clothing.
For more than two decades, the mall has sat idle and demolished, leaving residents in the now-predominantly Black Maryland county with the desire to have something in its place as shrubbery and other greenery push through the rubble of what was once a major weekend draw.
After some false starts for the site, residents who live near the former mall are now facing something unfamiliar that, though local officials say it would generate millions of dollars in much-needed tax revenue, has stirred controversy: a proposal for a massive data center.
“I feel it’s going to affect all of us as residents and as a whole,” said Frazier McCollum, who lives within one mile of the Landover Mall site and is behind a movement to stop the nearly 90-acre plot from being converted to a “hyperscale” data center that would feature five buildings and use 820 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 656,000 homes.
Frazier McCollum’s June petition against the project has raked in more than 21,000 signaturesand kicked off an online fury that morphed into the disruption of a data center task force meeting in September. In October, residents yelled at local elected officials over the proposal and what they said was a lack of transparency about it.
“We know hyperscale data centers aren’t good for communities,” Frazier McCollum said.
As the data center industry grows across the country, concerns about noise and light pollution, water consumption and energy use are also spreading to largely Black and Brown communities like Prince George’s, whose residents have wrestled with a legacy of environmental racism.
Local officials are weighing those concerns against the potential financial gain amid a structural deficit that could reach $157 million over the next seven years.
Prince George’s council member Edward P. Burroughs, III (D-District 8), said that amid that deficit, he and his board colleagues have to figure out how to increase the county’s commercial tax base in the face of federal spending cuts that have further hurt the county.
“These are our realities,” Burroughs said. “The county has to be more strategic for sure in attracting the type of industries and development that we want.”
A struggle to attract businesses
Prince George’s has struggled to develop a vibrant commercial base as a D.C. bedroom community whose residents have largely depended on federal government jobs.
In some pockets of the county of nearly 1 million residents that became predominantly Black during the early 1990s, less attractive businesses — such as liquor stores, smoke shops and gas stations — have flourished. Among the county’s highest economic contributors is the MGM National Harbor Hotel & Casino.
Against that backdrop, residents have seen the introduction of data centers as another unwanted addition that can potentially bring harm to their community. Currently, Maryland is home to 45 data centers, according to the Data Center Map industry group. There are five existing data centers in Prince George’s, according to the county’s planning department.
Despite the fact that the county’s leadership is also majority Black, activists seeking to defeat the proposal at the Landover Mall site accuse them of ignoring the potential harms in favor of bringing in more tax dollars. What would be the Brightseat Tech Park is expected to generate $13.7 million in annual local tax revenue, according to a project presentation booklet.
“Black faces in high places will not save us,” said Brandon Forester, 40, an activist who lives in Upper Marlboro. “We need people who are representing our interests and not people who are just representing the interests of the moneyed consultant class.”
Area residents weren’t initially aware of the industry’s migration into Maryland when the groundwork was being laid for it.
Unaware during pandemic
Efforts to attract more data centers to the state took off at about the same time as the pandemic.
In May 2020, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law that created sales tax exemption for equipment used in data centers that meet certain qualifications, a move geared toward further attracting the industry to the state. The bill also allowed for local governments in Maryland to reduce or eliminate property taxes on that same data center equipment. The law was anticipated to reduce general fund revenue at the state level and decrease local property tax revenue, a fiscal summary for the law projected.
For local governments, that loss could be offset by the tax revenue generated through the collection of real property taxes and business personal taxes.
Prince George’s County passed its own bill that year aimed at attracting data centers. The legislation allowed for a partial or complete reduction in the county’s property tax assessment on “Eligible Qualified Data Center Personal Property.”
In 2021, the county’s council unanimously passed a bill that would fast-track the process for data centers to enter the county. Doing so would create an opportunity for Prince George’s to become more competitive with other jurisdictions that lack long permitting processes, David S. Iannucci, the former Economic Development Corporation (EDC) chief executive and president, said during a February 2021 virtual committee meeting on the bill.
Iannucci told council members that a $500 million data center over a 10-year period could generate about $66 million in real property taxes and personal taxes.
“I would be happy if we could get a data center a year for the next five years,” he said. “That would represent a very significant increase in the commercial taxes.”
When the bill went before council for enactment in March 2021, area residents, still hunkered down in their homes, barely took notice.
One person signed up to speak against it while some residents submitted letters of opposition, according to county records. The following month, in a state of the economy address, then County Executive Angela Alsobrooks mentioned how her office was paving the way for “high value data centers to locate their facilities” in the county.
The speech generated little reaction, either in person or online.
“I don’t think data centers in general were on people’s radar back then,” said Greg Smith, a Hyattsville resident and longtime environmental activist.
Smith said people know more about data centers and their harmful impacts today.
He spoke against a 2024 bill introduced by Alsobrooks, now a U.S. senator, that would’ve hastened the county’s approval process for the industry.
Along with other residents, Smith cast doubt on the projected benefits of data centers during a public hearing on the bill held that November. Those against it also shared their concerns about the industry’s environmental impacts.
The council held off on voting on the bill. There was no movement on the bill during the past legislative session.
A shift under new leadership
The groundswell from Frazier McCollum’s efforts fueled a data center task force study that examined the industry’s potential benefits and impacts.
County council members Wala Blegay (D-District 6) and Shayla Adams-Stafford (D-District 5) co-sponsored a September resolution that temporarily paused the review and approval of future data center projects until the task force’s recommendation were out. Days later, County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy (D) issued an order that paused new data center construction permits.
Council member Jolene Ivey (D-At Large), who supported making it easier for data centers to come into the county when she represented the 5th District that includes the Landover site, has since reversed her position after learning more about the potential impacts.
“It is clear there should be strict guidelines surrounding where data centers are allowed in the region and how residents are protected from them,” Ivey said in a statement. “The old Landover Mall site should not have a data center.”
Last month, the task force published a report with 14 recommendations for new legislation. The report focused on zoning and land use, site and building design, environmental regulations and potential benefits to the community.
One of the report’s most significant proposals is to require data centers to go through a special use exemption process that would include public meetings on pending projects while allowing the county council to set detailed site qualifications. This could slow down the approval of controversial projects such as the one at the former Landover Mall, which has not gone through such a review.
Blegay, a data center task force member, has said she intends to undo previous legislation that cut out the council and residents.
Adams-Stafford, a newer member of the council who now represents the district where the Landover site sits, said she welcomes ideas to grow the county’s commercial tax base in a way that doesn’t put a strain on current infrastructure.
She said her constituents have seen the site become blighted over the years and that she understands their frustration in wanting more.
“It was an important gathering place,” Adams-Stafford said. “Residents want to see meaningful development that includes the community and gives them a say in the process and what comes into the area.”
Lerner Enterprises, the site’s owner, has not applied for additional permits, Adams-Stafford said. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
The task force’s recommendations and the public declarations of lawmakers to enact smart legislation aimed at controlling the industry’s growth in the county gives some residents a measured sense of optimism for the coming years.
“Hope is faith with action. We have to hope that we can impact the process,” said Forester, the activist. “I hope our elected officials will listen. If not, they don’t have to be our elected officials.”
Other Black communities
Residents against data center development, especially the hyperscale kind, say they don’t want Prince George’s County to be seen as a place where there’s little resistance just because its economy is hurting.
They cite Memphis, which has similar demographics of representation and residents, as a cautionary tale. That Tennessee city is grappling with pollution from 35 methane gas turbines used to cool the supercomputers inside a data center owned by billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company. Prince George’s residents also point to a predominantly Black, industrial area in Louisville where, despite local residents’ concerns about impacts, construction of a hyperscale data center is moving forward.
Prince George’s has an opportunity to do something more imaginative with its Landover site and more innovative with how it chooses to grow its commercial tax base, said Staci Hartwell, a strategic adviser for the South County Environmental Justice Coalition who also sat on the data center task force.
The county could replicate something like Ridge Square in Northwest Washington, a space for living, shopping and dining, she said. Focusing on data centers as a cash cornucopia is “now thinking” for something that could be obsolete over time, Hartwell said.
“We’re in the fight for the soul of Prince George’s County,” Hartwell said. “This fight really represents, you know, whether or not billionaires are going to run and decide the fate of this county or [if] the people are.”
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