Google Arcola data center, Sterling, Virginia

Google's Arcola data center, a 400,000-square-foot building in Sterling in eastern Loudoun County, Virginia, is one of three Northern Virginia sites where Google said in 2024 it would spend $1 billion on improvements. Google confirmed in November 2017 that it had bought the 91-acre Arcola property, just west of Dulles Airport, for $58 million, along with a 57-acre site in the Stonewall Business Park near Leesburg for $31 million.

"We've purchased property in Northern Virginia to increase our capacity and meet the growing demand for Google's services in the area," Google public affairs manager Liz Schwab said at the time. The purchase marked a shift for Google, which had previously leased wholesale data center space in the region. The Arcola campus, also called the Dulles Arcola Center, is permitted for up to 2.35 million square feet of data center space.

The 2024 spending, announced with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, covered the Arcola site, Google's 200,000-square-foot data center in Leesburg and its facility near Gainesville in Prince William County, and brought Google's total investment in Virginia to $4.2 billion. Google said the money would go to "technical infrastructure" and did not say whether it meant expanding the buildings. Bisnow reported that Google also plans a second facility closer to Dulles International Airport.

The Arcola site sits in the part of the county where two-thirds of residents live alongside nearly 200 operating data centers, and the county says noise and air quality are the complaints that come with that mix. Loudoun's noise rules cap sound at 55 dBA at a residential property line, and data centers must submit a noise study before construction and another within a year of opening.

In September 2026 the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 7-1-1 to pause new data center applications for 12 months, with Supervisor Kristen Umstattd voting against and Supervisor Caleb Kershner of the Catoctin district abstaining. "For years, I have been pushing for Loudoun County to get a handle on data center growth," said Algonkian District Supervisor Juli Briskman, who brought the pause forward. The pause covers new applications rather than existing campuses such as Arcola, and county staff are to bring a formal resolution to the board's October 20 business meeting.

The county has already removed data centers as a by-right zoning use and is exploring removing by-right status from projects that were grandfathered in; those decisions rest with the Board of Supervisors.