Compass Datacenters

Compass Datacenters has now abandoned three Virginia development opportunities in a single season. The company withdrew its roughly 2,000-acre data-centre project in Prince William County after the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court ruling blocking the fast-tracked rezoning in late April 2026. The site was planned near Manassas National Battlefield Park, challenged on grounds of inadequate public notice, and Compass confirmed it would not appeal.

In May 2026, Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas and Finance Secretary Mark Sickles disclosed that Compass had also halted its search for two sites in Greensville County and Emporia, walking away before filing any planning application, solely because of uncertainty over Virginia's data-centre tax exemption standoff. The Senate wants to end the abatement by end-2026; the House wants to extend it to 2035. Compass's pre-application withdrawal represents a new category of fiscal-risk exposure: the company is not merely losing sites after investment, it is declining to invest at all pending political resolution.

Compass Datacenters is a privately held US colocation and hyperscale developer, founded in 2011 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is backed by Brookfield Asset Management (invested 2020) and operates campuses across the United States, targeting hyperscaler wholesale and enterprise colocation clients. The three Virginia withdrawals are its most concentrated setback in a single market, and represent the clearest operator evidence that Virginia's fiscal-regulatory environment has materially deteriorated.