“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in the Rural Crescent Anymore.”

The Digital Gateway CPA provides an opportunity to create significant public benefit (both County-wide and in the Gainesville area), new critical commercial tax base revenue for the County budget and a means to bring certainty to future development in the most environmentally sensitive and economically significant way possible.

The first video shows the progression of development over the last 30 years and its impact on Pageland Lane. The multi-generational owners on Pageland have witnessed this evolution that has eroded the agrarian way of life. Farms lie fallow and now adjoin suburban and large lot residential development on what used to be farms.

As the Gainesville and South Dulles populations increase and traffic problems increase, Pageland Lane has become a traffic nightmare. The second video shows how commuters and dump trucks proliferate and block all access to Pageland Lane, creating huge backups and safety concerns. Farming operates at a loss and is all but dead on Pageland Lane. We can no longer claim that this Corridor is “rural” or an idyllic place to live and raise a family.

Data Centers can be forced to use topography, landscaping, tree preservation and sophisticated environmental techniques to minimize their appearance and impact – something that cluster hamlets, ten acre estates and one acre family subdivisions won’t. Data Centers have proven to proffer significant public benefit – whether it be parks, infrastructure improvement or critical County commercial tax revenue.

We could let the Pageland Corridor develop into more residential properties for people who will have children that will need to attend our already overcrowded and underfunded schools, require daycare services to be built, generate more traffic and shopping centers and create a burden on county services, schools and roads.

Or we can reserve the Corridor for data centers that bring economic opportunity and residential tax relief without an impact on traffic and human services.

This corridor is uniquely situated to provide a home for strategic Data Center partners – partners who can help us achieve a more diversified commercial tax base, ease school overcrowding and provide much needed resources to the County – without needing County services in return, and without generating the traffic congestion that residential development or agri-tourism businesses would.