Starwood files an Alexandria data center. The fight is the substation

Starwood Capital Group has filed plans for a two-building data center campus at the 34-acre Plaza 500 site on the Alexandria line in Fairfax County, Virginia, with the first building, Plaza 500 South, drawn at more than 226,000 square feet. The buildings are not what the neighbors are fighting. The five-acre electrical substation is.

Why it matters

For anyone selecting a data center site, this is the clearest case yet that power availability is no longer the only thing that can kill a deal. Starwood has the land and a path to power, and it still walked into a wall of organized opposition because the substation feeding the campus would sit roughly 67 feet from homes in the Bren Mar neighborhood. Virginia’s own legislative watchdog, JLARC, singled out the Plaza 500 project for being placed too close to residential zones. That is a siting-politics problem, not an engineering one, and it is the risk that is now migrating capital toward low-friction power markets.

The tell is what Starwood tried next. Residents pitched moving the campus to a Chantilly parcel that a Starwood affiliate had already agreed to buy in the spring for $166.8 million. County officials rejected the swap. So the developer owns an alternative site and still cannot easily relocate, which is exactly how entitlement fights turn a financeable project into a multi-year slog.

The numbers

Plaza 500 South is planned at more than 226,000 square feet on a 34-acre site. The contested substation covers about five acres and would stand roughly 67 feet from the nearest homes. The alternative Chantilly parcel that residents proposed carried a $166.8 million price tag for the Starwood affiliate that agreed to buy it.

What’s next

The proposal is headed to the Fairfax County Planning Commission in September, where Bren Mar residents plan to rally against the Edsall Road substation. Watch whether Starwood offers a setback or screening concession to buy peace, or holds firm and dares the commission to reject a project the county has already declined to move.