5 SWVA projects recommended for $9.5M in federal grants

Five Southwest Virginia economic development projects have been recommended to receive a cumulative $9.35 million in federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grants, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith announced Thursday.

The projects are on sites where coal was mined before 1977. Funding for the federal AMLER Program comes through the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, which has final approval over recommended projects. The Virginia Department of Energy administers AMLER funding for projects in the state.

“Repurposing land to create jobs and grow communities is a wonderful benefit of the AMLER program,” Youngkin said in a statement, “and we are excited to see these developments create opportunities in our Southwest communities.”

The five projects are:

• Data Center Ridge, Wise County, $3 million
• Haysi High School Site Redevelopment, Dickenson County, $2 million
• Southern Gap Office Park Building, Buchanan County, $1.95 million
• Norton Light Industrial Building, Wise County, $1.2 million
• Russell County Access Bridge, Russell County, $1.2 million.

The Data Center Ridge project is located on a 4,000-acre industrial site in Wise County known as the Bullitt site. The project will convert a 400-acre previously mined property into a 1-gigawatt, multitenant data center campus. It’s part of a planned clean energy development that could attract up to $8.25 billion in capital investments, resulting from a land development agreement between Energy DELTA Lab, Dallas-based Fortune 100 energy company Energy Transfer and Wise County. The AMLER funding would support site and infrastructure development for Data Center Ridge.

Funding for the Haysi High School site redevelopment project would support infrastructure development and land preparation for retail development. The Southern Gap Office Park project includes building a two-story commercial office building in the regional office park. The Norton project is constructing a spec building in the Project Intersection industrial park, where Atlanta-based high-speed internet service provider EarthLink is building a 28,000-square-foot customer support center. The Russell County bridge will add infrastructure supporting the Project Reclaim industrial park, which previously received close to $5 million in AMLER funding.

Virginia began receiving federal grant dollars for the AMLER program in 2017 and has recommended more than 40 projects since then. The state is one of six that receives AMLER grant funding.

“The AMLER Program, federal funding I championed, provides our communities in Southwest Virginia with opportunities to reuse old mine lands for new and exciting purposes. AMLER projects have contributed to job creation, economic growth and environmental renewal in the coalfields, improving the quality of life for residents in the surrounding areas,” Griffith, a Republican who represents Virginia’s 9th Congressional District, said in a statement.