Suffolk is looking to temporarily ban data centers while the city works on regulations for the industry.
Council on Wednesday voted to ask the planning commission to come up with an amendment to Suffolk’s development ordinance prohibiting the centers. Council would then have to approve it.
Data centers aren’t mentioned in the ordinances. City planners hope to establish restrictions and rules on where centers should be allowed. Until that’s done, planners warn that portions of the city’s rules could be construed to allow them wherever warehouses are allowed.
Councilmember John Rector didn’t want the city to get “blindsided” by a development application before staff finished. He called for the pause earlier in June. Mayor Mike Duman said it’s the right thing to do.
“Any size: big ones, little ones, baby ones,” Duman said. “If it’s a data center, we’re not going to consider it until we’re in a better position to do that.”
Suffolk wants to avoid what happened with solar farms, Duman said. The industry accelerated after 2020 as it worked to meet the demands of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which required energy providers to generate their electricity from renewable sources by 2045. At the time, localities across the commonwealth had lax rules about solar farms.
Solar companies then eyed rural land for development. Some, such as Stratford Solar in Suffolk, placed power inverters near property lines, which was allowed under the regulations at the time. The constant droning noise became a nightmare for some neighbors in Suffolk. The city in 2025 introduced more stringent noise and setback rules.
“We need to learn through our experiences and be rather deliberate in our planning rather than reactive,” Duman said.
Data centers are a political flashpoint. Disagreement between Democratic Gov. Abigail Spangerger and party colleague Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas over state tax incentives for the industry stalled progress on a state budget and raised concerns about a potential government shutdown. Lawmakers on Thursday announced plans to unveil a compromise on Friday.
Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer, earlier in June, said he wants the city to say “hell no” to larger centers, particularly the hyperscale ones used for cloud computing and large language model applications commonly called artificial intelligence.
Despite state-level incentives, the industry has created windfalls for localities. Prince William County, for example, used tax revenue from data centers to offset property taxes and give millions more for schools; Henrico County, used its data center revenue for a multimillion dollar affordable housing fund.
Opponents, however, argue that the costs outweigh the benefits. Data centers use a lot of energy, which the U.S. Department of Energy expects will amount to 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028. They need a lot of water to cool their systems, with one Prince William County center averaging 18,000 gallons per day. And they can emanate a constant humming noise, something some Suffolk residents experienced with solar farms.
The concerns haven’t slowed the industry. And as companies look to add more undersea cables off Hampton Roads’ coast to transfer data across the Atlantic, which require data centers, development pressure will ramp up.
“We need to be in no rush to do it,” Duman said. “We’ve got to make sure that we do it right.”
