The New Data Center Alley

THE FXBG ADVANCE TUESDAY 7/14/26 MORNING READ

By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR

Last summer, University of Mary Washington students Chloe Adler and Owen Wheeler made a goofy two-minute video using AI called Berry Blaster. Their fellow student Alanah Cleare, a third producer, starred in the production. This year, Adler and Wheeler, working with UMW Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Studies J.D. Swerzenski, upped their game considerably with a 26-minute professional-grade YouTube video titled The New Data Center Alley: Development in Fredericksburg, Stafford, and Spotsylvania, Virginia.

They posted the video on Swerzenski’s YouTube page near the end of June, and it’s already closing in on a couple of thousand views. Here’s how they summarized the project:

Data center construction has skyrocketed over the past decade, with Virginia at the center of it. Now, with Data Center Alley in Loudoun and Prince William Counties becoming built out, development has shifted focus down the I-95 corridor.

Dozens of projects have been either proposed or begun construction in the 10-mile radius around our project base at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. Notably, these mostly hyper-scale data center “campuses” dwarf earlier centers in land, energy, and water usage.

So, if Fredericksburg City, Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties are to become the new data center alley in Virginia, what sorts of economic, environmental, and community impacts can we expect?

Supported by small stipends and production funding from UMW’s Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer Symposium, Adler, Wheeler, and Swerzenski pulled together clips and material from 47 sources, ten of whom where live interview subjects. Among them were environmental activist and UMW Sociology Professor Eric Bonds, Erin Sanzero, director of the data-center monitoring group Protect Stafford, Joey LoMonaco, editor of the Fredericksburg Free Press, and local attorney Charlie Payne, who represents various data center interests in the area.

The video, featured prominently on the Protect Stafford website, has been making the rounds through dozens of shares and reposts on social media, garnering far more attention than last year’s Berry Blaster.

Swerzenski said the Summer Institute is only five weeks long, “so everything from initial interviews to final edits happened between roughly mid May to Mid June.”

For Adler, who just graduated from the university, the project was her UMW swan song. Wheeler, a rising senior, will be back for another year at the school. Swerzenski praised both for their “considerable role” in the production.

“They deserve all the shine possible,” he said.