GW Cashes Out in Loudoun With $427M Land Sale to Amazon

George Washington University is trading lecture halls for Amazon server racks in Northern Virginia.

The university sold its 122-acre Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Loudoun County to Amazon Data Services for $427.3 million, or roughly $3.5 million per acre, according to the GW Hatchet, an independent student newspaper. The buyer plans to redevelop the site into a data or information technology center, adding another large tract to Amazon’s ever-expanding footprint in a data center mecca.

The deal allows GW to remain on the Ashburn property for up to five years as it relocates programs, including its School of Nursing. University officials said the proceeds will be placed into a quasi-endowment to fund strategic initiatives, not to backstop debt at its medical enterprise.

For Amazon, the acquisition deepens its hold in Loudoun County, the epicenter of Northern Virginia’s data center boom. The company has invested more than $52 billion across three Virginia counties over the past 15 years and pledged another $35 billion statewide by 2040. It already controls more than 500 acres in Loudoun and has made purchases each year since 2019.

Last year, it picked up another slice of Northern Virginia, paying Stanley Martin Homes $700 million in one of the largest land deals in U.S. history.

The region’s draw is straightforward: abundant power, proximity to federal agencies and a state tax policy that exempts qualifying data center equipment from sales tax. Demand has only accelerated since 2022 as generative AI turbocharged the need for computing capacity.

The price for GW’s campus underscores how aggressively land values have climbed. The property carried an assessed value of $107 million, though the county pegged its fair market value closer to $207 million this year.

The boom has sparked local pushback. Residents have raised concerns about noise from cooling systems and heavy water use, as some large facilities consume up to 5 million gallons a day.

The GW campus sits next to established neighborhoods and the nursing school faces townhomes across the street.

— Holden Walter-Warner