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Google is considering a 1,200MW data center campus on about 1,000 acres in Goochland County, Virginia, the county confirmed on Oct. 28. The county's announcement named Google as the company behind a project that appeared in Virginia regulatory filings in July without an identified owner.
Wide shot of a Google data center networking facility from Richmond BizSense coverage of regional Google expansions.
Google would buy the roughly 1,000-acre site in West Creek Business Park from an entity tied to Pruitt Associates and Riverstone Group, which controls most of the park, then build and operate the campus itself. Google is performing due diligence on the land, and Goochland County Administrator Jeremy Raley said the county has received no plans, Richmond BizSense reported.
The land sits inside the technology overlay district the Board of Supervisors adopted in November 2025, which makes a data center a by-right use there without a public hearing. The project site would bisect Route 288 north of Patterson Avenue.
The project first surfaced in a State Corporation Commission filing on July 14 that described three data centers in the district: the 1,200MW campus, a 600MW project on about 150 acres off Ashland Road, and a 200MW project east of Route 288 north of Patterson Avenue. The filing did not identify the customers. It said the 1,200MW project's customer had executed four engineering letters of authorization with Dominion Energy, which place a project in the utility's queue before a feasibility study.
The county's account of the talks dates to early 2024. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership asked Goochland to show a data center user potential sites, and the county signed a nondisclosure agreement with Google on Jan. 10, 2024. Staff met Google once that month. VEDP then told the county Google was not interested. Google re-engaged after the overlay district was adopted, and the county and Google agreed on Oct. 27 to release the NDA.
"Google has more than 20 years of experience responsibly building data centers, and we are optimistic about the opportunity in Goochland County," said Clay Allsop, a Google regional public affairs manager. "As we continue our due diligence on the West Creek site, we are committed to working transparently with residents and local government leaders every step of the way."
Neighbors have objected. Erin Robertson, a resident of Henrico County's West End, told WRIC that the concern is "the impacts that a data center of this size is going to have on the community." WRIC reported that residents estimate 26,000 households in Henrico alone could be affected. Four Goochland residents have sued the county over its adoption of the overlay district, and a judge is weighing the county's motion to dismiss that suit.
East of the Google site, Denver-based Tract is on the conditional-use permit path for its Tuckahoe Technology Park, a 900-acre campus where data centers require public hearings.
Google is also building nearby. The company has started construction on a campus on more than 300 acres at 2700 Bermuda Hundred Road in eastern Chesterfield County, next to Meadowville Technology Park, and has other data center sites planned in western Chesterfield.
Baxtel counts 100 data center facilities in the Richmond market, 11 of them under construction, with QTS Data Centers the largest operator at 16 sites. The largest facility tracked in the market is the QTS RIC2 DC1 site at 72MW.
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