Buddy Rizer, CEcD, Loudoun Economic Development
As we crafted our economic development strategy, we began to focus on another unique asset of our community: the technology infrastructure that existed, in large part, thanks to the 1997 arrival of America Online, the company that grew into an Internet giant in our community. With the fast growth of AOL, UUnet/Worldcom, PSI Net and others, Loudoun became a connectivity hub with massive amounts of available fiber. In particular, when the MAE East facility moved to Loudoun County, we became a crosspoint for approximately 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic.
After a half-dozen hard years following the popping of the “dot-com bubble,” it was obvious that as the technology economy was coming back, Loudoun was sitting on assets that could place it in the center of the Internet resurgence. In addition to the fiber network, Ashburn had available land, water access and an abundance of reliable power. Virginia had dedicated significant resources to the transmission grid, and our power provider, Dominion Electric, is world-class at protecting the transmission grid and rarely has outages. Loudoun was also home to companies such as Equinix and Dupont Fabros, companies that were among the first to build and offer data center capacity in Loudoun County.
With that base to build on, Loudoun Economic Development set out to put in place an environment where data center companies could thrive. I started attending conferences, and embarked on getting a mission-critical certification so that we could understand what was important to the industry. We worked with smart lawmakers in the Commonwealth of Virginia to craft best-in-class incentives. We created a fast-track process that has paved the way for record timelines for entitlement and construction. Finally, we started marketing what by then we were calling “Data Center Alley” as the top location for data center development.