Loudoun County, Virginia, known by some as "Data Center Alley," is home to the world's largest concentration of data centers, mostly clustered around Ashburn. Roughly 70% of global internet traffic passes through its fiber backbone at some point, attracting hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and making any remaining land zoned for massive data-center development among some of the most valuable real estate on Earth.

Local media outlet Loudon Now has put a price tag on a 97-acre parcel east of Leesburg that sold earlier this month for a whopping $615 million, setting a new per-acre record in the county at over $6 million. 

The seller, JK Land Holdings, had purchased the Twin Creeks site for $57 million four years ago and secured approval for five two-story data centers. The buyer, an affiliate of SDC Capital Partners, recently acquired a separate portion of the property, previously sold to Dominion Energy for $45 million, to build a substation. 

JK Land Holdings manager Chuck Kuhn declined to comment about the transaction but noted, "This transaction brought $4 million of transfer taxes alone into Loudoun County—right this week."

"This one project alone will create between 150 and 200 full-time jobs in the county. It's going to create hundreds of construction jobs for years in the county. … When you think about the construction workers utilizing hotel rooms, restaurants, gas stations, stores, etc., it's really going to be a financial shot in the arm to the county and the town," Kuhn said. 

Kuhn said that limited industrial-zoned parcels in the county and new zoning curbs are fueling record land values, and warned that Loudoun is "getting to the end of data in the county as we know it."

"It's supply and demand. We're getting into very, very limited supply in the Northern Virginia area. You're seeing sizable transactions," he said. "With the new zoning regulations, we're getting to the end of data in Loudoun County as we know it, and it's driving up values. And that's unfortunate to see. I don't think data is right everywhere, but areas away from residential, away from schools, away from parks, certainly areas zoned for heavy industrial and quarry operations can be perfect locations."

Beyond driving up data center-zoned land values across the county, the AI infrastructure boom across the Mid-Atlantic has strained grids, sending electricity prices soaring. 

Years of misguided green energy policies by Democrats led to premature retirements of fossil-fuel plants, stripping grids of much-needed spare capacity. Instead of focusing on producing new stable power generation, Democrats went all-in on unreliable solar and wind.

What's needed now is competent governance and common-sense energy policies after a decade of failed far-left climate crusades that produce nothing but a power bill inflation crisis. Nuclear is a 2030s story.