Change of plan

It feels like the beginning of an inflection point that plans for a gigantic data center are being abandoned after years of litigation trying to block it. The story, as told by Etiido Uko at Tom’s Hardware, is that the last of several stakeholders has abandoned the Virginia Digital Gateway, which was going to be the world’s biggest data center. It died on a technicality: the public had not been properly notified before Prince William county’s Board of Supervisors ruled to rezone the site. The 2,100-acre project, Elroy Fernandes says at Startup Fortune, would have occupied 22 million square feet – per the developers, the equivalent of 144 Walmart supercenters. It was opposed by historical societies and local residents because it abuts the Manassas Civil War battlefield. The site, Fernandes writes, was meant to expand the Northern Virginia Data Center Alley, which processes 70% of global Internet traffic. He suggests that the case sets a precedent that “land use fights…can kill a fully…