Left: A map of three of the four potential data center developments in Goochland County. Right: A map of the property in question for a potential 1,200 megawatt development within the TOD that Google appears to be interested in. (Courtesy of State Corporation Commission filings)
Note: This is an update to a news alert first published Wednesday afternoon.
Google is targeting Goochland for another potential data center project in the Richmond area.
The tech giant plans to purchase a roughly 1,000-acre site in West Creek Business Park, where it would build a 1,200-megawatt data center campus, the company confirmed Wednesday after a county news release.
Because the property is within the county’s recently approved Technology Overlay District (TOD), any proposed data center on the site would be an as-of-right use and would not need to go through the public hearing process.
Google is currently conducting due diligence on the property. If he decides to move forward with the project and purchase the land, the next step would be to begin site engineering to develop a site plan to submit to the county.
So far, Google has not submitted any plans, Goochland County Administrator Jeremy Raley said in an email Wednesday.
The project site would split Route 288 north of Patterson Avenue and is owned by an entity related to Pruitt Associates and Riverstone Group, which controls most of the West Creek land.
A map of the TOD district of Goochland. (Courtesy of Goochland County)
The county’s Wednesday release was the first time Google was associated with the proposed project.
It was first mentioned, without identifying Google, in a July 14 State Corporation Commission regulatory filing, which listed several potential data center campuses proposed by mystery candidates for eastern Goochland.
These include Google’s potential 1,200-megawatt project, a 600-megawatt project that would span about 150 acres off Ashland Road and a 200-megawatt project east of Highway 288 and north of Patterson Avenue.
The three data center developments mentioned in the July filing are located in the TOD and an accompanying technology zone, which together extend approximately 5 miles along Route 288 from Interstate 64 south to Patterson Avenue. The TOD area is bordered on the west by Hockett Road and is approximately 4,400 acres, of which approximately 3,500 acres are in West Creek, controlled by Pruitt Associates.
According to the July filing, the 1,200-megawatt data center campus “client” had “executed four ELOAs,” or engineering authorization letters, for the project. Once an ELOA is issued, projects are placed in a project queue for Dominion Energy, where they can remain for years before a feasibility study is completed on a site and a Construction Letter of Authorization, or CLOA, is executed.
It was not specified in the SCC filing who the customer for the 1,200-megawatt campus was, but Google officials confirmed to BizSense on Wednesday that it was specifically interested in that site.
The county said in its statement that conversations with Google are not new. The release details a timeline of events, starting with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership contacting the county in early 2024 to “meet with a data center user and show them potential sites in Goochland County.”
Google data center in Oregon. (Courtesy of Google)
The release states that the county entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Google on January 10, 2024, and that county staff had a meeting with Google officials to discuss potential locations for data center development on January 30 of that year.
“After the meeting, VEDP told the county that Google was not interested and was not moving forward. There was no further communication with Google at that time,” the statement said.
However, after the TOD was passed last November, Google reconnected with the county and began due diligence on the West Creek site.
“Given that the County was already under NDA following previous discussions, the County did not enter into a new NDA,” the statement said.
In what the county said was an effort at transparency, it requested to be released from the NDA, and yesterday the county and Google agreed to the release, leading to Wednesday’s announcement of Google’s involvement.
The potential Google site is east of the proposed Tuckahoe Tech Park, which would rise in the county’s TOD West zone, a 900-acre area where data centers require a conditional use permit.
Denver, Colorado-based data center developer Tract is behind the project. The project would require approval through the public hearing process before it could move forward.
The announcement of Google’s interest in West Creek comes shortly after a recent hearing in a trial four Goochland residents filed suit against the county, claiming that planning supervisors and commissioners failed to clearly and legally explain their adoption of the TOD.
A hearing last Tuesday focused on the county’s motion to dismiss the residents’ lawsuit. This request is being deliberated by the judge in charge of the case.
Google’s efforts in Goochland would add to its already significant data center aspirations in the Richmond area.
The company has begun construction of a data center campus on a more than 300-acre site at 2700 Bermuda Hundred Road in east Chesterfield. next to the Meadowville Technology Park, and has several more data centers planned in the west end of Chesterfield County.
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