Amazon Drops Historic Sum on Virginia Data Center Site

Growing opposition to data center development did little to scare off one of technology’s biggest players from a blockbuster land deal.

Amazon paid a staggering $700 million for a future data center campus in Northern Virginia, the Washington Business Journal reported. The deal is one of the largest land deals in U.S. history and another sign that Big Tech’s land appetite in the region hasn’t cooled.

The e-commerce giant’s data center arm, Amazon Data Services, closed on roughly 70 percent of Devlin Tech Park, a 270-acre site in western Prince William County, on Halloween.

The seller, Reston-based Stanley Martin Homes, spent $51 million assembling the land over the past few years before rezoning it for up to 3.5 million square feet of data centers and three substations; that’s a sale premium of 1,272 percent for Stanley Martin.

The flip — at roughly $3.7 million an acre — puts Amazon’s purchase on par with Microsoft’s March 2024 deal for 124 acres in nearby Gainesville and cements Northern Virginia’s reign as one of the world’s top data center markets.

The transaction represents the priciest known sale for undeveloped land in Northern Virginia and rivals only a handful of U.S. land buys, such as Stan Kroenke’s $725 million purchase of Texas’ 560,000-acre W.T. Waggoner Ranch in 2016.

For Stanley Martin, the deal caps a remarkable pivot. The homebuilder initially planned 516 single-family homes on the site, but secured county approvals in late 2023 to switch to data centers amid an ongoing tech-fueled land rush. The rezoning survived fierce neighborhood opposition and a two-year court battle that concluded this fall, clearing the way for the sale.

Amazon’s acquisition underscores just how far developers and hyperscalers are willing to go for “entitled” land — parcels with full zoning and regulatory approvals — as local resistance to the sprawling facilities intensifies.

In Prince William, where massive server farms have sparked fights over noise, visual impact and grid strain, the Board of Supervisors is even considering rolling back its Data Center Overlay District that made such projects easier to greenlight.

Amazon hasn’t disclosed development plans for Devlin Tech Park, but Stanley Martin’s rezoning agreement includes tight design rules: height limits of 81 feet, deep landscape buffers, masonry facades and strict noise controls.

Those conditions will shape what could become another cornerstone of the region’s ever-expanding cloud empire.

— Holden Walter-Warner