Microsoft Files MNZ07 Data Center Permit for Prince William Site

Microsoft has filed a Clean Water Act permit application with the Army Corps of Engineers to build its MNZ07 data center campus on 123 acres in Prince William County, Virginia, the first hard test of whether by-right zoning is enough to move a Northern Virginia project when the county has spent this year rejecting them.

Why it matters

Prince William’s Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected a 1,940-acre data center rezoning in July, and watched the $100 billion Digital Gateway campus collapse for good in the same county this summer. Both of those projects needed the county’s permission. MNZ07 does not. The 123-acre site at 13490 University Boulevard in Gainesville sits inside the county’s Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, so the two one-story buildings and substation Microsoft wants to build are by-right. That closes off the local political fight that killed the last two projects. It does not close off the federal one: the Joint Permit Application now sits with the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, because the site crosses wetlands and a stream channel. For site selectors, the lesson is that entitlement risk and wetlands risk are now separate line items, and a parcel can clear one while still being stuck on the other for months.