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Just one week after the chairman of Staunton’s Economic Development Authority tried to assure city residents that when it comes to data centers they have nothing to worry about, Staunton’s mayor followed suit. Michele Edwards’s three-page calming of the waters, read into the record (see here, starting around the 49-minute mark) at the Sept. 10 city council meeting, was considerably longer than the brief remarks offered Sept. 3 by Billy Vaughn, but otherwise covered the same ground:
- There is no data center being built at Staunton Crossing, nor has an application for such a center been received;
- The idea of recruiting a data center for Staunton Crossing dates back to 2019 (in reality, 2018), when it became part of the city’s marketing plan for the industrial park;
- Despite the marketing plan, the city’s zoning code does not permit data centers and would have to be amended to allow such a project;
- Any necessary changes to the zoning ordinance would have to go through an appropriate review process, including public hearings—so, in essence, no need for Staunton residents to be concerned about a data center sneaking into town.
If only it were so simple.
In addition to the above similarities, Vaughn’s and Edwards’s assurances both ignored the fundamental question of why a data center is being pursued in the first place—thereby raising all the angst to which they have half-heartedly responded. It’s as though the two of them were poking at an ant hill while simultaneously saying “Don’t worry—they won’t bite. Look at the length of my stick!” But why poke it in the first place?
The “stick” in this analogy is the city’s zoning code, which is more of a slender reed than either Vaughn or Edwards will admit. Staunton Crossing is zoned partially B-2, General Business District, and partially I-2, Heavy Industrial District. Both classifications incorporate the permitted uses of their more restrictive counterparts, which means that any use permitted in I-1, Light Industrial District, is also permitted in I-2. None of these district ordinances make any reference whatsoever to data centers. Indeed, Staunton’s entire zoning code is silent on the subject, presumably because such centers were never envisioned as a possibility.
That’s important to remember when Vaughn states that Staunton Crossing’s zoning “does not permit data centers,” or when Edwards echoes with the assertion that “data centers were not, and still are not, a permitted use in the City of Staunton.” The agnostic zoning code neither allows nor disallows such centers. It simply turns a blind eye to the very idea, leaving the whole thing open to speculation and wild-assed interpretation.
By comparison, Staunton has had no problem articulating just what kinds of industries it does not want. The I-2 zoning description includes 53 prohibited uses, much of it reading like a century-old inventory of industrial processes, from candle and gunpowder manufacture to fat rendering and leather tanning. Yet for all that specificity, there is not one prohibited use that can be associated with high tech, such as semiconductor manufacturing. In most respects, the zoning ordinance is an antiquated tool that hasn’t kept up with the times.
(As an aside that speaks to the sensibilities of those who crafted these rules: among the permitted uses in the I-1 district are “adult businesses,” which receive a page-and-a-half of rules micromanaging their operations—far more than for any other endeavor.)
There also are various loopholes carved out for the heavy industrial district, starting with the caveat that its “regulations are designed to permit the development of the district for almost any industrial uses”—a invitation so broad that it presumably led to the highly specific list of exceptions. The industrial ordinance also asserts that, after review, “other uses of the same general character and compatible with those uses” already permitted in the ordinance also may be allowed. It’s worth noting, therefore, that those permitted uses include public utility service yards or electrical receiving or transforming stations—uses one could claim are analogous to a building full of electrical switches, which is one definition of a data center. Other potentially analogous permitted uses include warehouses and solar energy facilities (a rare contemporary note).
A general business district, meanwhile, allows “processing and manufacturing establishments that are not objectionable because of smoke, odor, dust or noise when the processing and manufacturing activity is conducted entirely within a completely enclosed building and where there is no storage or supplies or equipment on the premises outside the building.” It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how that passage alone could undergird an argument about processing establishments—data centers—that are never mentioned by name or specific function within the city’s guidelines.
The point here is not to provide a road map for someone seeking to build a data center in Staunton, but simply to point out the hollow nature of the reassurances our local officials are providing. In doing so, they frittered away an opportunity for leadership on an increasingly contentious issue—one so of the moment that Congressional candidate Beth Macy, for example, recently pledged to work toward a moratorium on new data centers until new guardrails can be built around their development.
“Up and down the Shenandoah Valley, big tech developers are coming into rural communities, getting local officials to sign non-disclosure agreements, and steamrolling local opposition,” she wrote on her campaign Facebook page following a visit to Shenandoah County, where a hotly contested 2-million-square-foot data center has been approved for construction by the Strasburg town council. That project is being planned for the town’s 80-acre industrial park, which is a third the size of Staunton Crossing.
Our local officials can tell us until they’re blue in the face that we don’t need to worry about that sort of thing happening in Staunton because our zoning ordinances protect us. But that claim becomes at least questionable to anyone who reads the ordinances, and it becomes farcical in the context of a Staunton Crossing marketing plan that promotes itself as “the perfect destination for businesses in a range of industries, including . . . data centers.”
That’s perfect, all right. Just perfect.
Looking askance 