QTS Richmond 1 data center, Sandston, Virginia

QTS Richmond 1, at 6000 Technology Boulevard in Sandston, in Henrico County, Virginia, is the data center campus QTS built inside the former Qimonda semiconductor plant, which it bought for $12 million at a bankruptcy-court auction in April 2010 and converted. QTS says the campus now covers 207 acres with 2.3 million square feet, is master planned for six buildings, and is powered for 238 MW.

Three of the buildings share the Technology Boulevard address; the fourth, fifth and sixth are at 3560, 3540 and 3520 Portugee Road. QTS says its closed-loop cooling needs only a one-time fill of water and then recirculates it, eliminating ongoing water demand for cooling. Richmond 1 is the first of three QTS campuses in Sandston, alongside Richmond 2 on Technology Boulevard and Richmond 3 on Portugee Road.

Across its hub at White Oak Technology Park in the Varina district, QTS has 12 buildings operating and more than 3 million square feet built, and plans 26 buildings and 8 million square feet in all, according to Richmond BizSense, which says Henrico has given administrative approval for eight of the remaining 14. The growth is on two new campuses: RIC4, up to 10 data centers on 478 acres across Technology Boulevard that QTS bought from the Henrico Economic Development Authority for $43.8 million in April 2024, and RIC5, up to seven on a 622-acre site straddling Williamsburg Road. QTS has asked the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to permit 370 more diesel emergency generators, on top of 544 generators and 11 cooling towers it is already permitted to run. The company said in a statement: "These systems are for emergency back-up purposes only and do not continuously run."

Residents of Varina have pushed back. More than 100 residents packed the meeting room at the Varina Area Library on May 19, 2026, filling every seat and the hallway, for a town hall with Varina Supervisor Tyrone Nelson that stretched nearly three hours. QTS's expansion of 17 data centers does not need to go through a public approval process because of local zoning laws.

QTS is not the only builder nearby: at 6110 Technology Creek Drive, Iron Mountain is developing four data centers totaling 365,000 square feet on 66 acres. Meta also operates facilities in White Oak Technology Park.

Since 2025 Henrico has required a provisional use permit for every new data center project in the county; RIC5 was the last major data center rezoning approved before that change. The generator permits rest with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, whose air permits carry a mandatory 30-day public comment period before they are issued. Because Richmond 1 is already built, the decisions that matter to its neighbors now are the ones on QTS's expansion: the DEQ generator permit and any new data center project, which would now need a provisional use permit from Henrico County.