What This Is
Mithlond is a research and advocacy project focused on how AI-era compute infrastructure is coming to Hampton Roads — and what kind of deal residents, workers, and communities might demand in return.
We're applying a specific analytical frame: the commons. Every data center depends on public goods — the electrical grid, water supply, public land, fiber infrastructure built with public money, and a regional workforce trained at public universities. Those dependencies create a claim. We want to understand what that claim is worth, whether it's being honored, and what alternatives exist.
This is not a polished advocacy campaign. It's a live research project. We're publishing our work as we go — findings, sources, dead ends, and open questions. We're doing this because the decisions are being made now, and waiting for a finished report means arriving after the fact.
Three Questions We're Investigating
Who Can Own This?
Can a municipality, port authority, or utility district own and operate compute infrastructure? What would that cost? What legal structures exist in Virginia?
Who Bears the Cost?
Data centers consume water and electricity at enormous scale. In a region already facing accelerating flood risk, who absorbs those externalities — and who decides?
Who Gets the Benefit?
AI is concentrating economic power. If the infrastructure lands here, does Norfolk's workforce, its universities, its communities get a structural piece — or just construction jobs?
What We Know So Far
Virginia's data center subsidy regime: $1.6 billion a year and a live political fight
Since 2010, Virginia has exempted data centers from paying sales and use tax on equipment, cooling systems, generators, and software. By fiscal year 2025, that exemption was costing the state $1.6 billion per year. The industry purchased $33.2 billion in tax-free equipment in that single year. When the exemption was created in 2008, the state projected it would cost $1.54 million annually. The actual figure now exceeds that estimate by more than 100,000%.
As of March 12, 2026, the Virginia General Assembly is deadlocked over this exemption with a Saturday budget deadline. The Senate — led by Finance Chair Louise Lucas of Portsmouth — voted bipartisanly to phase out the exemption by January 2027. The House wants to preserve it with clean energy conditions. A special session is increasingly likely. This is a live pressure point.
Hampton Roads has two data center geographies, not one
Virginia Beach's Corporate Landing Business Park is a subsea cable hub, not a general compute cluster. Three transoceanic fiber cables land there — MAREA (Spain, 2018), BRUSA (Brazil/Puerto Rico, 2018), and Dunant (France, 2021) — and the facilities there exist primarily to serve those landings. Virginia Beach reduced its computer equipment tax rate to $0.40 per $100 assessed value to attract this infrastructure.
Norfolk city proper has one data center: EdgeConneX EDCNOR01 at 3800 Village Avenue, 28,427 square feet, 0.75 megawatts of power. It's an edge caching facility, not a compute facility. It holds rights to adjacent expansion space. We found no pending permits or announced projects in Norfolk city limits beyond this.
Chesapeake rejected the region's first industrial-scale data center — unanimously
In 2025, developer Doug Fuller proposed a 350,000-square-foot AI computing data center in Chesapeake, made possible by the publicly funded Southside Network Authority fiber ring. Chesapeake's planning commission voted 6-1 to deny it; the full city council rejected it unanimously in June 2025. Community opposition centered on water use (no consumption projections were provided), noise, and grid impact. Virginia has no requirement to disclose water consumption projections for data center permits.
After rejection, two unnamed cities reportedly signaled interest in hosting the same proposal. No regional framework exists to prevent this race to the bottom.
The environmental stakes are not abstract
Norfolk has the highest sea level rise rate on the US East Coast: 5.38 millimeters per year (VIMS Sea-Level Report Cards). The Virginia Institute of Marine Science projects 1.5 feet of mean sea level rise by 2050; the safe planning figure is 2.1 feet. Virginia Beach's Corporate Landing data center cluster — including cable landing infrastructure that will take decades to depreciate — sits in a coastal flood zone on a coastline with accelerating inundation risk. No mandatory flood resilience requirements exist for data center permitting in Virginia.
Open Questions
We're being explicit about what we don't know. These are active research questions, not rhetorical. If you have relevant knowledge, we want to hear from you.
- ? What is the outcome of the Virginia budget fight over the $1.6B data center tax exemption? Deadline was March 14. A special session is expected but as of our last research session, no resolution had been announced.
- ? What data center permit applications are currently pending in Norfolk specifically? The DEQ air permit table shows zero Tidewater entries. Building permit records at data.norfolk.gov are a next step — currently blocked from automated query; we're building a GitHub Action to pull them.
- ? Where exactly does Hampton Roads sit in the Dominion Energy interconnect queue? A recent SCC filing disclosed that customers seeking more than 100 MW submitted in 2025 may wait up to 20 years. Newport News is already in discussions with Dominion. What does that queue position look like for the region?
- ? Do any existing data center deals in Hampton Roads include community benefit agreements? We haven't found evidence of any. We may be wrong.
- ? What legal structures would Virginia law allow for a municipal or port authority compute facility? We've done a preliminary statutory read — IDAs can own but not operate; the Southside Network Authority model is more promising. We need a Virginia attorney's review before any of this goes into advocacy material.
- ? What are the flood zone profiles of the existing data center sites — 3800 Village Avenue Norfolk and Corporate Landing Virginia Beach — against VIMS 2050 sea level projections? This is a GIS task we haven't completed yet.
Policy Briefs
Short documents for decision-makers — elected officials, city staff, community organizations. Updated as research develops. Treat all drafts as working documents, not final positions.
Research Log
The DEQ Table, the Dominion Queue, and What "Pre-Buildout" Means for Hampton Roads
180+ Virginia data center air permits statewide. Exactly one Tidewater entry — a hospital. No dedicated data center air permits in Hampton Roads. Dominion's interconnect queue: large customers may wait 20 years. DEQ generator guidance public comment open through April 8.
Legal Structures, a Correction on Norfolk, DEQ Air Permits, and the Budget Still Live
Virginia IDA statute: can own but not operate. Southside Network Authority model: more promising. 3800 Village Ave is 99,962 sqft and actively marketed. DEQ air permits are the right research tool.
The Budget Fight, the Cable Landings, and Norfolk's One Data Center
$1.6B/year exemption fight live; both key legislators from Portsmouth. Virginia Beach is a cable hub. Norfolk has one 0.75 MW edge facility. Correction to Session 1 figures.
First Pass: Virginia's Data Center Economy and Hampton Roads
JLARC findings, Chesapeake rejection, sea level baseline. Starting points — six open unknowns identified.
Engage With This Work
This project is open. We're not a nonprofit, not a coalition — not yet, anyway. We're researchers and advocates trying to understand something complex before the decisions get made. We want people who know things we don't.
Find us on Bluesky: @mithlond.bsky.social · Source and issues: github.com/jedelman/mithlond