Activists more receptive to Berry Hill data center plan

Plans for Herndon-based Balico to build an $8.85 billion data center campus on 2,233 acres near the Chalk Level and Whittles areas close to Chatham galvanized residents to form a movement in 2024 that evolved into the Coalition for the Protection of Pittsylvania County in 2025.

Members of the grassroots group spoke out loudly and often about their issues with the project, which could have included up to 84 data center buildings and a 3,500-megawatt natural gas power plant. Among their concerns: environmental and health risks, resource consumption and loss of farmland.

Following weeks of heavy opposition, Balico withdrew its rezoning application in April 2025.
This year, Southern Virginia officials faced another data center campus decision. In May, members of the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority unanimously approved a local performance agreement with Denver-based data center developer and operator Stack Infrastructure for a proposed data center campus at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill.

The company’s planned investment totals about $100 billion over three decades and is expected to create 2,500 jobs over 20 years.

While some residents have raised environmental concerns and questioned the project’s transparency, the coalition’s official response has been measured. “If we’re going to invite a data center to the region, Berry Hill is the only suitable site,” says Amanda Wydner, a coalition leader.

In a January post on Facebook, the coalition wrote that it “absolutely supports driving development to space in existing industrial parks.”

A Stack Infrastructure official who spoke with Virginia Business in May noted that residents of Southern Virginia have known for years that eventually a big project would be located at the megasite. They’ve had time to digest that there will be development there, the official said.

As for the coalition, its members are focusing on encouraging residents to help shape Pittsylvania County’s next comprehensive plan, which is being updated for the first time since 2010.

During the Balico fight, members of the grassroots group mentioned language from the plan calling for preservation of the county’s “natural resources and aesthetic quality.”

They don’t want the updated plan to remove those guardrails. “If we do not participate,” the coalition wrote on Facebook, “the voice of those who are willing to develop and destroy our rural communities will be heard instead.”