A federal lawsuit spearheaded by Mary Ann Ghadban, the Pageland Lane landowner in rural Gainesville behind the PW Digital Gateway project and assemblage that would have yielded the world’s largest data center campus, has been stayed pending the Virginia Supreme Court’s forthcoming consideration of the project.
In a Feb. 16 complaint, Ghadban sued data center developer QTS – a subsidiary of GW Acquisitions Co. that opted to pursue an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court after a three-judge Virginia Court of Appeals panel on March 31 effectively voided the massive data center proposal.
Ghadban, who owns a 50-acre property, agreed to sell her land to QTS once the land was rezoned for data centers.
But with the Digital Gateway project now mired in litigation, Ghadban reversed course and filed a lawsuit alongside several Pageland Lane landowners in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
A Prince William County Circuit Court ruling via Judge Kimberly Irving last summer initially voided the project before the Court of Appeals affirmed her decision.
According to the complaint, Ghadban is joined in the suit by her husband, Thomas Ackerly, neighbor Page Snyder and a handful of fellow property owners — Nicole and Kenneth Bland, Sarah Ramey, the Underwood Family Farm and Phyllis Thompson.
The complaint alleges as its key tenet that GW Acquisition finalized a purchase agreement with one family, that of Beverly Davis, in January 2024 without closing with any of the other property owners.
At full buildout, the Digital Gateway near Gainesville would include over 22 million square feet of data centers spread out across over 2,100 acres in western Prince William. The project would include 37 data centers, roughly the size of 144 Walmart supercenters.
The Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved a rezoning for the project in December 2023.
QTS’ fellow developer-defendant in the initial Circuit Court and Appeals Court lawsuit, Compass Datacenters, opted to end its appeal of the successive rulings April 28.
QTS chose the opposite path two days later, right at the Virginia Supreme Court filing deadline, forging ahead with an eleventh-hour petition for appeal.
“It is further ORDERED that this civil action be and is STAYED pending the Virginia Supreme Court’s resolution of Board of County Supervisors of Prince William County v. Oak Valley Homeowners Association. Inc.,” Judge Leonie M. Brinkema wrote via a May 22 order in the U.S. District Court, referring to the Ghadban suit, “and it is further ORDERED that by October 30, 2026, the parties file a joint status report informing the Court of the status of the litigation before the Virginia Supreme Court.”
Prince William County withdrew from further appeals of the Digital Gateway rezoning suits in mid-April.
Both Ghadban and a QTS spokesperson did not immediately return InsideNoVa’s requests for comment.