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GOOCHLAND COUNTYOctober 31, 2026

Google weighs 1,200-MW data center campus at Goochland's West Creek

Google confirmed it is doing due diligence on a roughly 1,000-acre West Creek Business Park site, where a data center could proceed by right with no public hearing.

GOOCHLAND COUNTY — Google is performing due diligence on a roughly 1,000-acre site in West Creek Business Park for a potential 1,200-megawatt data center campus, the company confirmed this week, according to Richmond BizSense and Virginia Business. Google has not bought the property or submitted plans to the county, County Administrator Jeremy Raley said. The Google West Creek data center campus (Goochland) would straddle Route 288 north of Patterson Avenue.

Richmond BizSense reports the site lies in Goochland's Technology Overlay District, where a data center is a by-right use that requires no public hearing. If Google proceeds, the county says the next steps are site engineering and a site plan submitted to staff for review.

State filings show the scale of the power request. A July 14 report from the State Corporation Commission's chief hearing examiner, in Dominion Energy's West Creek 230-kilovolt transmission loop case, describes three potential data centers with projected demand of 200, 900 and 1,200 megawatts. Virginia Business reports that a prospective customer executed four engineering letters of authorization totaling 1,200 megawatts, and that serving that project would require four new substations.

The county signed a nondisclosure agreement with Google on Jan. 10, 2024. After one Jan. 30, 2024, meeting, Google told the Virginia Economic Development Partnership it was not moving forward. Google re-engaged after the Board of Supervisors adopted the Technology Overlay District in November 2025. The county asked in September to be released from the agreement, and both sides agreed to release it after Google's Oct. 27 public statement.

The announcement comes as the district faces a court challenge. Four residents have sued over its adoption, and a Goochland Circuit Court judge took the county's motion to dismiss under advisement after an Oct. 20 hearing, with no ruling yet. Separately, the roughly 900-acre Tuckahoe Tech Park proposal by Tract, west of the Google site, needs a conditional-use permit and public hearings. Google is also building a campus on a 300-plus-acre site in eastern Chesterfield County and has a planned $3 billion campus in Botetourt County, Virginia Business reports.

Why it matters

A data center on this site could move to site-plan review without a public hearing, so the lawsuit and any changes the Board of Supervisors makes to the overlay district are the main remaining points of public input.

What's next

  • Pending Google decides whether to buy the West Creek site and file a site plan with Goochland County
  • Pending Goochland Circuit Court rules on the county's motion to dismiss the Technology Overlay District lawsuit

Sources

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