Data Center Proposed in Historic Area of South Stafford
Project would be built on parcels located near site of Hunter's Iron Works and the Gari Melchers Home and Studio.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Stafford County has received an application for a rezoning and conditional use permit to construct a data center along Olde Forge Drive between U.S. 17 and the Rappahannock River.
The Blaisdell Property Data Center is proposed for 181.3 acres of undeveloped, wooded land across 11 parcels in the George Washington district, between several residential neighborhoods and near the site of a Revolutionary War-era forge and the Gari Melchers Home and Studio at Belmont.
The project would include 1.48 million square feet of data center buildings on the property.
The application was submitted by the property owner, TC Blaisdell of Delaware, part of the real-estate development firm Trammell Crow, in December. It requests a rezoning from urban commercial and agricultural to heavy industrial; a conditional use permit to construct “public facilities/utilities on the property;” and a comprehensive plan amendment to redesignate the future land use of the property and surrounding area from “residential” to “business and industry.”
The property is located within the county’s Falmouth Gateway targeted development area, which is currently recommended to include “1,650 residential dwelling units, including 750 multi-family, 400 townhouse, 500 single-family units, and 1,000,000 square feet of business development.”
The application notes that changing the future land use designation to “business and industry” will “attract users, like the Applicant, which will offset the demands on community facilities and infrastructure” of the current and anticipated residential use.
According to the proffer statement submitted to the county, the project will not use potable water for industrial cooling, “unless approved by the county’s Utilities Department.”
Instead, the applicant agrees to use reuse water as “the sole primary water source for cooling to the extent the County Utilities Department confirms there is adequate reuse capacity to serve the Project,” according to the proffer statement.
Noise levels will be kept to a maximum of 55 decibels in residential zoning districts, 65 decibels in commercial and office zoning districts, and 79 decibels in industrial zoning districts between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. weekdays, and 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekends and legal holidays. The sound levels can be measured at the property boundary or “at any point within any other property affected by the noise,” according to the proffer statement.
According to a decibel level comparison chart published by Yale University, 55 decibels is equivalent to the hum of a refrigerator and 80 decibels is a telephone dial tone. Exposure to sustained noise at 80-90 decibels can result in hearing loss, according to the chart.
Also according to the proffer statement, the applicants will clear and dedicate a pedestrian trail connection to the existing Belmont-Ferry Farm trail network “upon the county’s issuance of the first certificate of occupancy permit,” and pay $25,000 for one or more interpretive signs to identify the trail.
During the Revolutionary War, James Hunter operated a forge on the Blaisdell property. Hunter’s Iron Works supplied the Continental army and navy with muskets, swords, and other armaments and camp implements, according to a historic marker at U.S. 17 and Olde Forge Drive, and it was so significant to the wartime effort that Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of Virginia, ordered special military protection for it.
According to an email sent earlier this month to Deuntay Diggs, Chair of the Stafford Board of Supervisors and the George Washington district representative, from Hunter Morin, president and founder of the Fredericksburg-based GeMROI Company, there is an effort at work to preserve the Hunter’s Iron Works site.
“There is an opportunity to preserve this amazing site in perpetuity, a site that is so very important in the history of our country,” Morin wrote. “Trammell Crow is in conversation with the newly formed Freedom Forge Foundation regarding the donation of the significant property that borders the Rappahannock, the site of the original Hunter Ironworks.”
A public meeting to provide neighbors with more information about the data center project was scheduled for last week but was cancelled due to winter weather. Charlie Payne, land use attorney for the project, told the Free Lance-Star that it would be rescheduled “within two weeks.”
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