Residents Debate Data Centers at University of Maryland Community Roundtable

The question Renee Hyman brought to Thursday night's roundtable at the University of Maryland was blunt: "I just want to know the negatives and the positives. I hope to learn more about the data centers, and what they have to offer the city and the county, and the state, where's the money coming from. Is it benefitting us? Is the money coming out of our pockets, taxpayers?"

Hyman was one of many Prince George's County residents who gathered on the College Park campus for a community roundtable organized by the D9 Coalition for Civic Engagement. The discussion on the evening of March 12 reflected months of mounting tension over large-scale data center development in a county that currently hosts five such facilities.

At the center of that tension is an 87-acre parcel in Landover where Lerner Enterprises wants to build a hyperscale data center on the site of the demolished old Landover Mall, vacant for nearly two decades. The Prince George's County Planning Board approved the project in March 2024, a decision that, notably, did not require county council approval. As opposition grew, County Executive Aisha Braveboy issued an executive order in September 2025 pausing data center permitting until a task force studying potential risks, benefits and revenue issued its findings.

Community advocate Taylor Frazier McCollum, who launched a petition against the Landover project in June 2025, has watched that petition grow to more than 22,500 signatures. Her objections are personal. "My grandfather's house is less than a mile from that site, my mother's house as well," McCollum said. "It's going to directly impact my family. I just feel like it isn't something that needs to be close to residential areas and in our community without our say, period." McCollum views Braveboy's moratorium as the product of public pressure rather than a genuine shift in the county's development priorities.

Critics have raised a cascade of concerns about the Landover proposal: light, thermal and air pollution; depressed property values in surrounding neighborhoods; strained water supplies; and higher utility bills in a majority-Black community. At a separate forum at Jimenez Hall on February 25, Sophie Bose, a senior environmental science and policy major and volunteer director for 17 for Peace and Justice at UMD, said the proposed facility could consume up to twice the water that Landover residents use, trigger rolling blackouts and increase local asthma rates. Bose framed the project as one that "will serve the needs of billionaires, not Landover residents." Staci Hartwell of the South County Environmental Justice Coalition, who spoke at the same forum, put it in starker terms: "I really do believe that this is a fight that determines whether or not we will have sovereignty over our lives."

Not everyone at Thursday's roundtable shared that opposition. Attendee Rick Munford argued the county should look at what is already working in the region. "You've just got to take a look around the adjacent counties and some of the things they're doing. There are multiple data centers already in this region providing great service," he said. Supporters broadly contend that data centers underpin modern internet infrastructure, handling storage and computing demands that residents rely on daily.

The policy apparatus responding to this debate is the Qualified Data Center Task Force, established under CR-016-2025. Its charge covers three areas: the impact on local energy demands and costs to county ratepayers; environmental effects on air, water and woodland quality with recommended mitigation; and quality-of-life impacts around data center sites, including viewscapes, green space, urban mobility and recreational access. The 10-member task force brought together representatives from Exelon, SMECO, the Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, Natelli Communities, LIUNA, RISE Investment Partners, and UMD's Department of Environmental Science and Technology, alongside Hartwell from the South County Environmental Justice Coalition. The task force held a public meeting on November 12, 2025, and its final report is now posted on the Prince George's County legislative portal.

The legislative foundation for this moment stretches back to 2021, when the county council formally established data centers as a permitted land use in county zoning, following state and county legislation that created tax incentives and streamlined approval processes for large-scale development. Janet Gingold, speaking shortly after Braveboy's executive order, captured what many residents feel is now at stake: "Prince George's County is really at a crossroads here where we have big chunks of land slated for development, and we need comprehensive planning to figure out the best things to do for those areas of land."

Organizers have continued hosting forums since the permitting pause took effect, with a stated goal of converting the temporary halt into a permanent prohibition. Whether the county's formal review process produces recommendations that match that ambition will shape what rises from the rubble of Landover Mall.