'We've become addicted': A Virginia county used AI data center riches to fund parks, schools and rec centers — some say it's still not worth it

Loudoun County has used its data center windfall to help pay for new schools, better roads and emergency services. The spending has included some splashier projects, too, like the new Ashburn Recreation and Community Center, which opened in July 2025 with a 50-meter competition pool, leisure pool, spa, and fitness area.

Sound like a sweet deal?

Not everyone living there thinks so.

Some residents are getting fed up with the noise, power demands and development that have come with the industry’s explosive growth.

“We’ve become addicted to the data centers for their tax revenues, but at what cost?” Juli Briskman, a member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, told The New York Times.

AI turned this Virginia county into a cash machine

Loudoun got into the data center business long before ChatGPT became a household term.

The groundwork was laid in the 1990s, when internet giants AOL and UUNet set up shop in Ashburn, and the MAE-East internet exchange brought miles of fiber infrastructure to the area.

Then in 2000, Loudoun’s zoning administrator determined that data centers could be treated like office buildings, allowing them to be built “by right” in areas zoned for office parks, without going before the county’s Board of Supervisors for approval.

By 2008, Loudoun wasn’t just allowing data centers, it was actively chasing them. The county launched a marketing push to lure more facilities to the area, capitalizing on its already formidable internet infrastructure. “Data Center Alley” was born.

Then the money really started rolling in.

Tax revenue from computer equipment inside Loudoun’s data centers climbed from about $150 million a decade ago to $1.1 billion last year, according to the Times. That money has helped the county fund schools, roads and emergency services while reducing pressure on residential taxpayers.

The economic impact stretches beyond Loudoun. Virginia’s nonpartisan Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission estimates the state’s data center industry supports about 74,000 jobs, $5.5 billion in labor income and $9.1 billion in Virginia GDP annually.

But there’s an important catch: Most of those economic benefits come from constructing data centers rather than operating them. A typical 250,000-square-foot facility may employ only about 50 full-time workers once it’s running, according to JLARC.

The county now has about 53 million square feet of data centers, equivalent to roughly 920 football fields, according to the Times. Some homeowners living near the facilities have complained about noise and pollution from generators and turbines. One Ashburn resident was told a 185-foot high-voltage transmission tower could be built in her backyard as part of infrastructure needed to meet growing electricity demand.

How the AI boom could hit your taxes, power bill and home value

You don’t have to live in Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” for this boom to matter to your wallet.

AI requires massive computing power, and all those servers need massive amounts of electricity. The Department of Energy (DOE) says data centers consumed about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and could consume 6.7% to 12% by 2028.

And newer federal estimates suggest the appetite for power could grow even further. A 2025 update from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory cited by the DOE estimates data centers could account for 11.8% of U.S. electricity use by the end of the decade, with scenarios ranging from 9.5% to 15.3%.

For homeowners, that means that a proposed data center is about more than whether a giant tech company is bringing billions of dollars into town; but the real question could be who gets the money and who picks up the costs.

If a local government taxes data centers effectively, residents could benefit through better-funded schools, roads, parks and emergency services or less pressure on residential property-tax rates. Loudoun is an example of this, where the county says data centers generate almost half of its property-tax revenue.

But residents should also pay attention to how much electricity new projects will require, what transmission lines or substations may need to be built and who will ultimately shoulder the cost of expanding the grid.