Amazon Scraps Ashburn Data Center Project in Virginia, US, Agrees to Transfer $65 Million Worth of Land

After weeks of private negotiations, Amazon has formally withdrawn its application to build a data center campus on the George Washington University Science and Technology Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, a 122-acre property the company bought earlier this year for USD 427 million.

The decision was confirmed by Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall and comes bundled with a settlement package, dubbed Project Potomac Promise, that includes land worth roughly USD 65 million, a rezoning pledge, and a USD 5 million housing contribution.

Agreement details

Under the agreement, Amazon will hand over approximately 25 acres of the site to the county. Randall described the parcels as ideal for a new Community Arts Center and an Indoor Sports Facility. The remainder of the land will be rezoned for mixed-use development, including attainable and market-rate housing, and the company has additionally donated USD 5 million to the county's housing fund.

Speaking on social media, Randall said she, the county attorney, and the county administrator had met with Amazon over many weeks. She framed the outcome in firm terms: her goal was to bar any data centers, or infrastructure capable of supporting them, from the property, and Amazon agreed both to withdraw the application and to forgo legal action that could have forced data center development on the site.

How the USD 427 million campus deal came apart

Amazon Data Services purchased the campus from George Washington University in March under a five-year sale-leaseback structure, an arrangement that gave the university time to relocate and the company time to pursue planning approvals. Amazon's plan, known as the Bridgefield Tech Center, called for four buildings totaling 800,000 sq ft (74,320 sqm). The proposal ran into immediate resistance.

Local residents and students pushed back hard against the development, and the county board has grown increasingly hostile to data centers. Earlier this month, county staff advised the supervisors that Amazon would need additional approval before any construction could begin, pointing to a zoning determination that data centers were not allowed as a primary use on the property.

Amazon: litigation was not the answer

Josh Weissman, Amazon's VP for data center capacity delivery, acknowledged that the company and the county read the property's legal development potential differently.

Rather than engage in what he called costly litigation, the company concluded the best outcome was a shared vision for the campus, embodied in Project Potomac Promise. Weissman emphasized the company's two-decade history in Loudoun County, noting that more than 3,400 Amazon employees live there today.

He said the team moved on the university sale when approached but took the community's pointed concerns about data center development at the site seriously as they emerged. He also cited Loudoun's proximity to Amazon's corporate and retail operations and the need to expand attainable housing as the county grows rapidly. Randall, for her part, thanked Amazon for its willingness to meet and engage.

A county turning against its core industry

The withdrawal lands in the world's largest data center market. Northern Virginia hosts hundreds of facilities with gigawatts of combined capacity, much of it concentrated in Loudoun County, where Amazon owns or leases a large number of buildings. But the county's posture has shifted markedly in recent years as development has multiplied.

Officials have stripped data centers of by-right zoning status and are now weighing whether to remove by-right protections from previously grandfathered parcels. Both county-level and statewide moratoriums on new data center development are under consideration.

The retreat from the Ashburn campus represents a notable concession by Amazon in a county where it has long been deeply entrenched, and it underscores the widening friction between data center expansion and organized local opposition across the region.