Prince George's County Moves To Put Data Center Development On Pause

By John Domen, WTOP News, Maryland Matters

September 17, 2025

Prince George’s County officials see the potential for tax revenue from large data centers as a huge economic boon at a time when their budget is severely strained, but they are putting further development of the centers on pause anyway.

County Executive Aisha Braveboy issued an order pausing the issuance of any permits for data center construction in the county until a task force can finish making recommendations to help guide their future development. At the same time, the county council began moving toward legislating its own moratorium as well.

Councilmember Wala Blegay, who is on the task force, said the move has been in the works for months — before concern about the building of a data center at the old Landover Mall site blew up.

“The concern that we had is that, what if somebody starts putting something up while we’re doing this task force,” Blegay said. “This task force would not be taken seriously.”

The task force is working to unveil a list of recommendations to guide the process of building data centers next year.

“We do not have any requirements or standards with infrastructure, which is an issue, to leave it to project by project,” Blegay said. “Because of the concerns people have, we do believe that standards need to be set ahead of time.”

In 2021, the council voted to streamline the approval process, which is notoriously slow in the county.

“I think everyone understands now that that was a huge mistake because the residents have a stake in where these data centers are located,” Braveboy said. She said now is her chance to help the county get it right.

“I’m in support generally of data centers,” Braveboy said. “I do believe it’s a really good economic tool in the right locations.”

Blegay said right now, the old Landover Mall site is one of three large data centers currently going through the process.

“If we’re going to move forward, we have to set standards, and we have to make sure that it’s well thought out,” Blegay said. But she also conceded this could get litigated by any of the companies behind those three projects.

“It’s a risk,” Blegay said. “We’re working with our lawyers to make sure our actions are supported by law. But we do know that we do anticipate some litigation.”

WTOP has reached out to a spokeswoman for Lerner Enterprises, which owns the Landover Mall site.