2,050 jobs. 3,528 acres. And twenty years of Southern Virginia site readiness finally cashing in.
The Announcement
On June 29th, 2026, the Virginia General Assembly accepted all fourteen of Governor Abigail Spanberger’s budget amendments and ended a monthslong 2026-2028 biennium impasse. When the amendments cleared, so did the state performance agreement that had been holding back Stack Infrastructure’s data center campus at the Southern Virginia Megasite in Pittsylvania County. The following day, Stack publicly confirmed the project was moving forward.
The commitment is $73.5 billion in capital investment and 2,050 jobs over the 20 year performance term. Local officials in Pittsylvania County and the City of Danville describe the buildout ceiling at up to $100 billion over roughly thirty years, with extended job projections reaching 2,500. Both numbers appear in the record. The $73.5 billion figure is enforceable.
This is the single largest private capital commitment ever made to a Virginia rural megasite. Average starting salary at the site is $80,500. Stack purchased approximately 2,990 of the megasite’s 3,528 acres for roughly $737.8 million in land proceeds, split 50/50 between Danville and Pittsylvania County under the interlocal agreement that has governed Berry Hill since assembly.
The Tenant
Stack Infrastructure is operating at Berry Hill through a project affiliate, SAC III Acquisition Co. The parent company is one of a small number of privately-held hyperscale data center developers currently building at the scale the largest cloud and AI customers require. Stack’s existing portfolio includes campuses in Virginia’s Northern Virginia cluster, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Portland, Toronto, and several international markets.
The Berry Hill campus is being positioned for AI-scale workload deployment. Stack has not disclosed the identity of the hyperscale tenant or tenants that will occupy the campus, but the site scale, 2,990 acres, extended power capacity, single-parcel governance, is consistent with a build-to-suit structure for one or more of the largest cloud operators in the world.
The company has committed to fund its own electrical infrastructure at the site, which is unusual for a project of this scale. Standard hyperscale site selection expects the state to fund a substantial portion of substation and transmission investment. Stack’s decision to carry that cost themselves is a signal about how attractive the site’s core characteristics were before any incentive negotiation began.
The Package
The deal structure is unusual in two ways. First, the land sale itself carried most of the local benefit. Second, the state incentive package was leaner than any comparable-scale megaproject in recent memory.
- The land sale: Approximately 2,990 of the megasite’s 3,528 acres for roughly $737.8 million represents an average of about $247,000 per acre. That is priced for a hyperscale campus, not for typical industrial land. The 50/50 revenue split between Danville and Pittsylvania County reflects the Regional Industrial Facility Authority governance structure the two jurisdictions established when they assembled the site over two decades.
- The RIFA performance agreement: Approved May 18, 2026, sets the enforceable job creation and capital investment floor: $73.5 billion in capital committed and 2,050 direct jobs over the 20 performance term. Extended projections reach $100 billion and 2,500 jobs over thirty years, but only the 20 floor is contractually gated to clawback.
Public incentive layers were not the driver. Virginia’s Business Ready Sites Program had already funded Berry Hill’s grading and utility extension over the preceding decade, that work is what made the site placeable in the first place. Standard sales and use tax exemptions for data center equipment apply, but the state did not write a JDIG-scale performance grant for this deal. The Southside Virginia rural incentive structure, enterprise zones, opportunity zones, local abatements, sits underneath, but the deal did not require a bespoke state package to close.
For comparison, AstraZeneca’s $4.5 billion Albemarle County commitment carried nearly $200 million in direct state incentives plus up to $680 million in pharmaceutical grant fund payments over twenty years. JetZero’s Piedmont Triad International commitment in June 2026 ran approximately 34 percent incentive density on $4.7 billion of capex. Stack Infrastructure at Berry Hill runs at a fraction of that density on a project 20x larger.
Site readiness and preparedness assisted Virginia’s efforts in this deal.
The Structural Advantage
The reason Stack Infrastructure chose Berry Hill is what was already on the ground when the site selection call arrived.
The Southern Virginia Megasite sits on 3,528 total acres, with 1,902 developable graded acres, jointly owned by Pittsylvania County and the City of Danville through the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority. The site holds VEDP’s Tier 4 Infrastructure-Ready designation overall, and the graded pad area carries Tier 5, VEDP’s highest site-readiness classification. Fewer than a dozen sites in Virginia have ever held Tier 5.
The megasite was assembled over roughly two decades starting in the early 2000s, financed by successive rounds of Business Ready Sites Program grants, RIFA bond issuances, and county-level land acquisitions. It was pursued by multiple prior tenants (auto assembly plants, chemical operations, aerospace suppliers) and lost each of those bids to other states. In 2022, Cardinal News described Berry Hill as a site “fueled by losses.” Southside Virginia had spent 20 years paying for a megasite it could not fill.
Then a hyperscale-scale data center tenant appeared. The site’s Tier 5 pad grade, its water and wastewater capacity, its redundant electrical service potential, its acreage in a single contiguous parcel, its 50/50 dual-jurisdiction ownership that pre-committed the tax base split, every one of those characteristics was purpose-built for exactly the kind of tenant Stack turned out to be. The megasite was not designed for Stack. But it was designed to survive being turned down long enough to catch a Stack when one came.
What This Means for Southside Virginia and Its Peers
Berry Hill is now off the market as a competitive megasite. The lesson is not that other rural Southside jurisdictions can land a Stack. The lesson is what has to be standing before the call arrives.
Counties and regions competing for the next hyperscale, EV, life-sciences, aerospace, or advanced-manufacturing megaproject, whether that is Halifax, Mecklenburg, Charlotte, Brunswick, or Greensville in Virginia, or Anson, Cleveland, Robeson, or Rockingham across the state line, need four things standing before the site selection call arrives.
- A permitted, buildable megasite with VEDP Tier 4 or Tier 5 readiness, or the equivalent designation in the applicable state program. Berry Hill did not become Tier 5 overnight. Six administrations paid for that classification across twenty years.
- Interlocal governance: a Regional Industrial Facility Authority, a Joint Industrial Development Authority, or a formal county-city partnership, that pre-negotiates the tax base and job credit split before a tenant asks. Danville and Pittsylvania’s 50/50 RIFA agreement was decisive. It meant Stack did not have to mediate a jurisdictional fight to close.
- Standing utility infrastructure capacity: Water, wastewater, and especially electrical service, sufficient for hyperscale-class loads. Business Ready Sites Program grants can fund utility extensions but cannot conjure grid capacity. That has to be planned with the utility a decade ahead.
- Analytical readiness: the ability to put a defensible market analysis, workforce assessment, comparable-deal benchmark, and infrastructure readiness picture in front of a site selection team within days, not months. Berry Hill had that answer ready after twenty years of losses.
The first 3 require political will, capital patience, and continuity across administrations. The 4th is where most jurisdictions still fall short.
Sources
- Office of the Governor of Virginia, press release on 2026-2028 biennial budget acceptance, June 29, 2026.
- Cardinal News, reporting on Stack Infrastructure’s June 30, 2026 announcement to move forward at Berry Hill.
- Virginia Business, coverage of the Stack Infrastructure Berry Hill data center project and the Virginia budget, June and July 2026.
- Data Center Dynamics, coverage of Stack Infrastructure’s $73.5 billion commitment to the Berry Hill campus.
- Southern Virginia Megasite official communications, Danville-Pittsylvania RIFA performance agreement approved May 18, 2026.
- Virginia Economic Development Partnership site tier designations and Business Ready Sites Program history.
- Danville and Pittsylvania County public records on the 50/50 interlocal agreement governing Berry Hill.
- Comparable-deal incentive density calculations from VEDP, NC Commerce, and Carolina Journal 2026 reporting.
