Campbell County, Virginia is holding a fact-based hearing on whether to uphold zoning administrator approval for a 57-acre heavy industrial parcel as eligible for a data center by-right.
The appeal comes from a neighboring resident, and the board will decide whether the zoning determination stands, which would let MESH Capital move into formal data center planning.
Meanwhile, the county has already passed an emergency ordinance shifting data centers from by-right to special-use permits in heavy industrial zones, but it has delayed making that change permanent for 120 days.
Supervisors and staff are using that window to get smarter on data center impacts, including power demand, land use, and community pushback, after attending a regional data center summit.
Industry voices at that summit stressed that large operators track zoning risk closely and strongly prefer by-right approvals to de-risk timelines and capital deployment.
If the board overturns the prior zoning determination, the site can still be developed for other heavy industrial uses, but its attractiveness for high-capex AI and cloud data center builds likely drops.
The article is useful for reading how a smaller Virginia county is reshaping its stance on data center siting, risk, and power access in real time.
