Amazon is reversing its plan to expand its data center footprint in Virginia—forgoing its $427 million plan to build data centers on George Washington University’s Virginia campus it had signed an application for in February. The company will donate roughly 25 acres of the property to Loudoun County for community facilities instead.
The agreement, dubbed “Project Potomac Promise” by Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall, calls for Amazon to withdraw its data center site plan, abandon legal action to pursue development on the property, and work with the county to rezone the remaining land for mixed-use development—with housing as the predominant use. Amazon will also contribute $5 million to the county’s affordable housing efforts through the Loudoun County Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
“My goal was to disallow data centers or infrastructure that could support data centers on this property,” Randall said in a press conference alongside Amazon Web Services data center delivery vice president Joshua Weissman. “Through our collaborative, respectful conversations, Amazon has agreed to forego its proposed application for data centers, and of note, forego any legal action to realize data center development on this site.”
An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune in a statement “Loudoun will be a focus for Amazon’s Built Together commitment we announced a few weeks ago, which includes tuition assistance for community colleges and local project funding.”
Amazon has a long history in Virginia’s “data center alley,” where the highest concentration of data centers in the world is located. The company launched its Northern Virginia cloud region in 2006, and according to Weissman, invested more than $63 billion with more than 3,400 Amazon employees in Loudoun County itself since 2011. Amazon had announced in 2023 it intended to invest an additional $35 billion in data center campuses across the state by 2040.
Loudoun County also reported there were approximately 233 existing data center buildings, representing about 56.5 million square feet of space in the county. Data centers generated approximately $1.2 billion in real and personal property tax revenue in fiscal 2026, or 39% of the county’s overall budget.
A land donation worth $65 million
Under the agreement, Amazon is dedicating approximately 25 acres along Route 7 to Loudon County, with a stated fair market value of about $65 million. The land is intended to accommodate a community arts center and an indoor sports and recreation facility.
Randall said the county would organize public meetings to solicit residents’ input on the redevelopment. She said she expects the rezoning process to take about a year—even under a “fast-track” schedule.
“What we’ll probably do is focus first on the indoor sports arena,” she said, “and focus more on the community arts center first as the rezoning process is going through.”
How Amazon’s plan unraveled
In February, GW president Ellen Granberg announced the university had sold the campus, but did not initially identify the buyer or disclose the purchase price. The university said the transaction would help support its “long-term financial health.” A significant portion of the proceeds were marked for an endowment supporting the university. In March, the university’s student newspaper, The GW Hatchet identified Amazon Data Services as the buyer, who purchased it for $427 million.
“It just came as a sudden announcement one day that they had sold the property, and that they couldn’t disclose the buyer because there was some kind of a confidentiality agreement,” former GW professor Ellen Scully-Russ previously told Fortune. “But of course, a student newspaper did their due diligence, and by the end of the day, they knew who it was, and they knew the price, and they communicated that to the community.”
In late July, Amazon filed a site plan for a proposed data center development. Named “Bridgefield Tech Center,” the proposal called for four two-story data center buildings totaling more than 800,000 square feet.
However, in April, Algonkian district supervisor Juli Briskman called for county staff to examine the potential effects of the proposed development. Briskman said the purchase price of $427 million—roughly four times the assessed property’s value—and the property’s zoning status made it reasonable to expect Amazon to pursue data center construction. But by July, Briskman challenged the prospect of adding another large data center.
“Replacing the George Washington University campus with four massive data center buildings would be a profound loss for our community,” Briskman said in a press release. “The site offers a generational opportunity for education, research, housing, and other forms of economic development that could directly benefit Loudoun residents. I strongly oppose this proposal and will fight it every step of the way.”
Amazon eventually decided to pursue a deal with Loudoun County and abandon its data center investment.
“There was not a moment where it was decided that this was a bad idea,” Weissman said. “We just heard from the community. We partnered with Loudoun, and we just decided this was just the right thing to do.”
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