Lucas brings data center listening tour to Goochland County

Louise Lucas is bringing her data center listening tour to Goochland County on June 23, putting local concerns about one of Virginia’s fastest-growing land-use fights at the center of a statewide budget debate. The stop west of Richmond comes as residents brace for questions about power demand, transmission lines, water use, traffic, tax revenue, zoning and what a nearby property shift could mean for rural neighborhoods.

Lucas, who chairs the Virginia Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, has used the tour to argue that data centers should “pay their fair share.” That argument has landed in the middle of budget talks at the Capitol, where lawmakers were working toward a June 30 deadline and a July 1 fiscal deadline while disputing whether Virginia should keep a major sales and use tax exemption for the industry.

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that the exemption delivered about $928 million in tax savings in fiscal year 2023, and that about 90 percent of the industry used it. The exemption has been on the books since July 1, 2010 and is scheduled to expire June 30, 2035. Senate proposals have sought to keep the break and add a new tax, while House and administration-backed plans have also revisited data center-related provisions.

Goochland is a fitting stop because the county has already begun reshaping its own rules. In late 2025, after months of public engagement, the county adopted a Technology Zone and Technology Overlay District. County officials said they received a tremendous amount of feedback after a July 7, 2025 community meeting, followed by additional hearings and town halls, as residents and neighborhood groups raised concerns about rural character, noise, traffic and the county’s direction on large technology developments.

Those worries are no longer abstract. In June 2026, Tract submitted an initial application for Tuckahoe Technology Park, a proposed multi-phase data center campus on about 900 acres near West Creek. For people living near West Creek, Readers Branch subdivision and Hockett Road, the listening tour is a chance to press state leaders on how much growth Goochland should absorb, what infrastructure it would require and who would pay for it.

The tour has already drawn crowds elsewhere. More than 200 people attended the Chesterfield stop on June 16 at Manchester Middle School, a sign that the debate over data centers, tax policy and local land use is spreading well beyond the Capitol. In Goochland, the answers residents get could shape not only the county’s next development decisions, but its place in the broader regional buildout now moving west from Richmond.