Data center future in Prince George's County hinges on primary election

Prince George’s County’s data center fight may be decided before summer even begins. With no Republican filed for county executive, the June 23 Democratic primary is poised to determine whether Aisha Braveboy keeps control of a debate that has already put a 180-day pause on new data center permits at the center of county politics.

The stakes are local and immediate. Prince George’s is facing a budget gap of more than $90 million, and supporters of hyperscale facilities argue that data centers could bring a new tax base and construction work. One Maryland Tech Council and Sage Policy Group report estimated that a mid-sized 800,000-square-foot data center could generate about $20 million in annual county revenue, create 4,800 construction jobs and support about 300 jobs overall, including about 100 on-site operations jobs.

The sharpest flashpoint is the former Landover Mall site, where Lerner Enterprises has floated a Brightseat Tech Park campus described as a $5 billion project with five facilities and about 4.1 million square feet of potential data center space. Other descriptions of the first phase call for an 800,000-square-foot building that could draw 300 megawatts and use roughly 2.5 million gallons of water per day. That scale has fueled fears in nearby neighborhoods about electricity demand, noise, truck traffic and pressure on already stretched utilities.

Residents and environmental advocates have argued that the process has moved too fast and that the county has not been transparent enough about where the facilities could go. County Council member Shayla Adams-Stafford, whose district includes the former mall site, called the area "intentional blight" and said data centers should not be built near schools or residential areas.

Those concerns helped drive the county’s formal response. In September 2025, the County Council adopted CR-98-2025, creating a 180-day moratorium on permits and subdivision plans for data centers, and Braveboy later extended the pause by executive order through April 30, 2026. A 400-page task force report released in November 2025 recommended steering future projects toward industrial zones and away from environmentally sensitive and densely populated areas, increasing the residential buffer from 300 feet to 400 feet in most cases, and considering a high-energy-use surcharge to shield residents from higher power bills.

The debate has stretched beyond Landover. County staff have said data centers were being studied in Brandywine, Konterra and Landover, while activists from the Prince George’s County Sierra Club and other groups have pressed candidates to say whether they will back or block hyperscale development. Braveboy, who won the 2025 special election after Angela Alsobrooks left for the U.S. Senate, faces challengers Billy W. Bridges, Marcellus Crews, Charnell D. Ferguson and Greg Holmes. In a county where land use, infrastructure and tax policy now intersect, the primary is likely to decide whether data centers become a revenue engine or a lasting source of neighborhood strain.