In 2023, county records valued the 76.5 acres at 5305 Pageland Lane at a little more than $1.62 million. One year later, the same ground carried an assessment of more than $25 million. No barn came down and no road went in. The only change was the zoning on paper.
This summer that zoning was erased. The parcel is now being reassessed as if the rezoning never happened. One document survived the court fight, though, and it explains more about the land west of Gainesville than the "Digital Gateway is dead" headlines do.
How zoning moved a field's value fifteenfold
An assessor values land based on what it can legally be used for, and its size matters less than that. After the Board of County Supervisors rezoned the Pageland Lane corridor for data centers in December 2023, county valuation first treated the land as data center property worth roughly $1.5 million an acre. The number did not hold steady after that, and the way it changed shows how uncertain the value was.
| Valuation snapshot | Per-acre figure | What drove it |
|---|---|---|
| Initial data center valuation, after the 2023 rezoning | About $1.5 million | Rezoned use |
| First adjusted round | $438,750 | Discounts for litigation, infrastructure limits and data center supply |
| Later review | $329,063 | Second review after owner complaints; total Gateway land at $574 million |
The second review also produced disagreement among valuation professionals. In Prince William Times coverage, one appraiser called the litigation discount arbitrary and unsupported by market data, and assessors in neighboring jurisdictions said they had not seen discounts like it in their own work. The sources report these figures as separate snapshots and never fully reconcile their timing, so the table shows how the number moved over time. It is not one official series.
The tax bills came from those numbers. One 131-acre holding went from a $3.2 million assessment to $50.1 million, with a reported tax bill of about $485,000. Owners who had been enrolled in the county's land-use taxation program faced rollback taxes. Under the county's use-value program rules, rezoning to a more intensive category triggers rollback for the current year plus the five most recent completed tax years, with interest.
These figures matter for the rest of this post because they show that the zoning designation, more than the acreage, set the value of the land.
What the July order undid
The legal ending came in steps over about four months.
- March 31, 2026. The Court of Appeals of Virginia unanimously affirmed the lower court's ruling voiding the three rezonings. It found that the county's hearing advertisements did not meet state and county requirements.
- April 14 and April 28, 2026. The county voted not to appeal, and Virginia Business reported that Compass said it would stop pursuing the project. That left QTS as the only appellant.
- July 2, 2026. QTS affiliates withdrew their Virginia Supreme Court appeal, and Potomac Local reported that the company said it was ending the project.
- July 29, 2026. A Court of Appeals order lifted the stay that had kept the rezonings in effect during the appeals.
Since then, the county's PW Digital Gateway status page says the Office of Planning has changed the zoning maps back to each property's prior district. Real Estate Assessments is reassessing every parcel and updating its tax bill, and each property will also be reviewed for "any applicable penalties and interest." The county's development application schedule dated October 8, 2026 lists the three original cases, REZ2022-00032, REZ2022-00033 and REZ2022-00036, as void.
The county has not published final reassessed values. In spring 2026, before the appeals ended, a county spokesperson estimated that the 136 parcels, then assessed at more than $275 million combined, would drop to about $135.1 million if the rezonings were canceled. That was a projection. The county's update gives no amounts or timetable for the reassessments, and the use-value program page describes an application and revalidation process, not an automatic return to land-use status.
The private contracts are also unresolved. Prince William Times reported that QTS and Compass had signed sales contracts with 112 landowners. A separate federal lawsuit, in which a group of landowners is trying to get out of their QTS agreements, was put on hold, and the parties were ordered to file a joint status report by October 30, 2026.
The plan the court left standing
Most coverage stops at that point and misses the document that survived. On November 1, 2022, the Board adopted Comprehensive Plan Amendment CPA2021-00004, which designated the corridor for technology use. The Court of Appeals upheld that action. The county's August 5 update says plainly that the amendment "remains in place."
The comprehensive plan and the zoning map do different jobs. The zoning map says what an owner may build now. The comprehensive plan states the county's long-range policy for what the land should become, and county staff, the Planning Commission and the Board review any future rezoning request against it. After July 29, the Pageland Lane corridor has its old rural-era zoning and a long-range plan that still calls for technology use.
The county describes the next step plainly. Any future attempt to rezone the land "would need to go through the normal rezoning application process," including staff review and public hearings at the Planning Commission and the Board. The research found no new rezoning application on file for Pageland Lane as of the October 8 schedule. The September 22 Board record shows no item to repeal or amend CPA2021-00004. That record only covers the current period, and it does not predict anything.
The area is not empty farmland. Earlier Prince William Times reporting named Trappers Ridge, Dominique Estates and Catharpin Farm Estates as subdivisions inside the planning area. It described Heritage Hunt and Oak Valley as nearby. The Oak Valley Homeowners Association welcomed the project's end and cited concerns about nearby homes, property values, noise, light and water.
The September 22 vote changed the path back
If the corridor's future depends on the rezoning process, the county's broader data center rules matter as much as the court ruling. On September 22, 2026, the Board unanimously adopted DPA2026-00006, which restructures the Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District.
According to the county's summary of the ordinance, the amended overlay is "closed to any future expansion." Parcels can stay in it only through one of five eligibility pathways, and qualifying parcels keep their existing by-right data center permissions. Outside the overlay, new data center proposals in the listed business, office and industrial districts, plus office or industrial land bays in planned districts, now need a Special Use Permit.
One deadline is still open. The fifth pathway, which covers pending rezonings, special use permits, proffer amendments, substation reviews and certain site plans, has 90 days from adoption. That window ends December 21, 2026, and the county says it will then publish an updated overlay boundary map. A motion to cut that window to zero days failed 3 to 5.
Taken together, any proposal near Pageland Lane would now face the plan amendment, a full rezoning with public hearings, and in most cases a Special Use Permit hearing as well. The overlay change does not rezone the corridor by itself, because the July order already returned the land to its prior zoning. It does change which approvals any new proposal would need.
What sales data says about homes near data centers
For a buyer looking at Heritage Hunt, Oak Valley or other homes in the area, the question is whether being near data center land has shown up in home prices. The best study available is regional. George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis examined 13,348 home sales that closed in 2023 within seven miles of a data center in Prince William, Loudoun and Fairfax counties. The researchers tested whether being closer to a data center lowered sale prices. The report found no average negative effect. The relationship actually ran toward higher prices closer to data centers, but the authors say they do not claim proximity itself makes a home more attractive. A Schar School summary says the result held for detached homes, townhouses and condos, and it attributes part of the pattern to nearby infrastructure, jobs and airports.
The study has limits for this question. It does not break out results for Heritage Hunt, Oak Valley, Catharpin or any single Gainesville neighborhood. Only 146 homes in the sample sat within a quarter mile of a data center. It also measured existing buildings, while the Digital Gateway was a proposal that was never built. The research turned up no neighborhood-level sales or appraisal study tied to the Gateway itself.
Quick answers
Is the Digital Gateway rezoning still in effect? No. After the July 29, 2026 order, the county changed the zoning maps back to each property's prior district.
Could data centers be proposed on Pageland Lane again? The comprehensive plan amendment remains in place. A new proposal would need a full rezoning with Planning Commission and Board hearings. None was listed on the county's October 8, 2026 application schedule.
Where can an owner ask about a corridor reassessment? The county directs questions to the Real Estate Assessments Office at 703-792-6780 or [email protected].
I've worked as a Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser in Prince William County since 2002. If you're weighing a home near Pageland Lane and want to understand how the corridor's zoning, the plan designation and the reassessments affect a specific property, Andrew R Capuano can walk through those records with you. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
