Union County Townships Adopt Data Center Zoning Rules
Union County's new data center zoning rules mark a transformative moment for infrastructure developers and investors alike.
Two more townships in Union County are drafting formal rules for how data centers are built, where they go, and what they must do once they're operating. It may seem like a quiet regulatory story on the surface — but for infrastructure developers, site selectors, and investors watching the mid-Atlantic and broader national data center market, it signals something worth paying close attention to.
Zoning code rewrites don't make headlines the way billion-dollar hyperscaler announcements do, but they determine whether those announcements actually turn into operating facilities.
What Data Center Zoning Rules Actually Do
At the most basic level, zoning rules define what can be built in a given area — and under what conditions. For data centers specifically, these rules typically govern setbacks from residential properties, noise limits from cooling equipment, power infrastructure requirements, water usage for cooling systems, and aesthetic standards like screening and landscaping.
The unglamorous reality is that a 200MW campus can get killed faster by a township's zoning ordinance than by a utility interconnection delay.
Local governments have historically been slow to write data center-specific zoning language, often leaving facilities to navigate rules written for industrial parks or generic commercial development — neither of which captures what a hyperscale or colocation facility actually looks like operationally. Generators running for backup power tests, 24/7 truck traffic for equipment deliveries, and the visual mass of a 400,000-square-foot building surrounded by cooling towers don't fit neatly into legacy code frameworks.
When municipalities get ahead of it with specific zoning rules, it creates clarity — which the development community generally values, even when the rules are strict.
What's Happening in Union County
Union County's move to formalize data center zoning isn't happening in a vacuum. Multiple townships within the county are now taking up the question of how to define and regulate these facilities as a distinct land use category. Two additional townships joining that effort is meaningful because it suggests the county is working toward some level of coordinated regulatory consistency — rather than a patchwork of incompatible rules that create arbitrage opportunities for developers willing to township-shop.
The specifics of the new rules — exact use classifications, permitted zones, performance standards — aren't fully detailed in early reporting, which is typical for ordinances still in the drafting or public comment phase. But the direction is clear: these townships are moving from reactive to proactive governance on data center development.
For facilities already operating in Union County, new zoning rules typically include some form of legal nonconforming use protection — meaning you don't have to tear down an existing building because new rules changed the standards. However, expansions, major modifications, or new construction on the same parcel will almost certainly need to comply with whatever the updated code requires. That's where operators with long-term growth plans need to pay close attention now, not after the ordinances are finalized.
What This Means for Infrastructure Developers
Site selection for data centers has always involved a due diligence stack: fiber, power, water, labor, climate risk, tax incentives. Zoning has always been on that list, but it often gets underweighted in early-stage site screening because it feels like something you can work through later.
That assumption is getting more expensive to hold.
As communities across the country grapple with the pace and scale of data center development — particularly in Northern Virginia's Loudoun County, Georgia's Butts County, and increasingly in mid-Atlantic markets — local governments are writing new rules faster than developers can run their feasibility models. Union County is part of a national pattern, not an outlier.
Developers who treat zoning diligence as a late-stage item are going to keep watching shovel-ready sites become entangled in public hearings they didn't see coming.
The practical implication: infrastructure developers need dedicated local government relations and zoning counsel embedded in their site selection process from day one. Not as a closing checklist item, but as a continuous intelligence function. That means tracking planning commission agendas, attending township meetings before a project is announced, and understanding the political economy of each municipality — who supports tax base expansion, who has noise complaints from an existing facility, and who's running for office on a "no more data centers" platform.
For developers who do that work, Union County's zoning activity is actually an opportunity. Clear rules, properly navigated, reduce permitting risk and can compress the timeline from site control to construction start. Uncertainty is the real enemy of infrastructure investment — and defined zoning, even with meaningful restrictions, reduces uncertainty.
Navigating the Regulatory Environment as an Investor
For investors evaluating data center assets or development sites in markets like Union County, new zoning rules create a two-track dynamic.
Sites that are already entitled — meaning they have approved permits and are zoned correctly for data center use — just got more valuable. The cost and time required to replicate that entitlement position under a new, more structured regulatory framework increases the barrier to entry for competing projects. An entitled site in a newly regulated market is effectively protected by regulatory scarcity.
Sites that aren't yet permitted face a different calculus. Investors need to underwrite the entitlement risk seriously — including the possibility that the as-proposed project will require variances, design modifications, or outright use permit applications that weren't contemplated in the original pro forma. That's not necessarily disqualifying, but it needs to be priced in, and the timeline assumptions need to be honest.
The most common mistake in data center land investment right now is underwriting entitlement timelines based on pre-2022 averages, when community opposition and regulatory scrutiny were both significantly lower.
The strategic play for patient capital is identifying sites in markets where zoning rules are being developed — as they are now in Union County — before those rules are finalized. Engaging with the public process, contributing technical expertise to zoning discussions, and positioning a project as a model for what responsible data center development looks like can build relationships with local officials that translate directly into project approvals.
The Bigger Trend
Union County's zoning update is one node in a much larger shift in how American municipalities are thinking about data centers. The industry added roughly 5,000MW of new data center capacity in the U.S. in 2023 alone, driven by AI infrastructure buildout and cloud expansion. That scale of physical development — the land, the power draw, the water consumption, the traffic — is now visible to communities in ways it wasn't five years ago.
The response has been predictably uneven. Some jurisdictions are actively competing for data centers with tax abatements and streamlined permitting. Others are imposing moratoriums. Most are somewhere in between, trying to write rules that capture tax revenue and jobs while managing real concerns about power grid strain and neighborhood character.
What's emerging is a more sophisticated regulatory environment — one where operators and developers who understand how to work within local governance frameworks will outperform those who treat zoning as a bureaucratic obstacle to be minimized.
The townships in Union County that are formalizing data center zoning rules aren't trying to block development. They're trying to manage it. That distinction matters, and the developers who recognize it early are the ones who will be building while their competitors are still in variance hearings.
The smart move right now: get someone in the room before the rules are written.
Explore more about how to navigate these changes and seize opportunities in the data center market at InfraSale Marketplace.