The ‘Godfather of Data Centers’ Making Offers Big Tech Can’t Refuse
Virginia’s Loudoun County is a giant data-center market thanks in part to a radio DJ-turned county executive director for economic development
- The AI race is driving a data-center construction boom, with annual spending recently exceeding $42 billion, creating challenges for local governments and power markets.
- Data centers contribute about 45% of Loudoun County’s revenue, but concerns about noise led officials to tighten oversight, requiring a board vote for new projects.
ASHBURN, Va.—Loudoun County’s growth into a mecca for one of the largest infrastructure build-outs in American history kicked into gear when Buddy Rizer taped a list of companies to his office door.
The housing crash was hammering local government finances in 2008. Rizer, a radio DJ-turned county executive director for economic development, bet big on a rebound in the form of a seemingly arcane tech-industry need: data centers.
Rizer jetted to the West Coast with the list as his guide, pitching Loudoun County to the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook with a simple but compelling idea. “The first rule is to make it easy for people to spend money,” he said recently.
The door-knocking helped set off the suburban Washington, D.C., community’s growth into the world’s largest data-center market over the nearly two decades since, attracting hyperscalers like Alphabet and smaller developers such as DataBank. As Silicon Valley now funnels untold riches into server farms around the country, Rizer said, “I wait for those guys to call me.”
The race to dominate artificial intelligence has created a financial superstructure of eye-watering corporate valuations, massive capital-expenditure plans, risky Wall Street trades and convoluted debt deals. Much of it hinges on something decidedly low tech: the ability to build data centers as fast as humanly possible—and all the dealmaking, zoning and permitting that it entails.
That has turned the relationships between thinly staffed local governments and the world’s richest corporations into a high-stakes dance. Tax breaks and local revenues are on the line. Data centers’ voracious energy needs hold the potential to upend power markets spanning entire regions and push up residents’ bills. Public opinion in some areas is turning sharply against developers, who create few permanent jobs.
Annual spending on data centers zoomed past $42 billion in recent months, according to the Census Bureau, making it one of the few types of construction set to increase in 2026. In communities striving for investment, the flood of money is adding to local governments’ sense of urgency to decide if the increasingly controversial industry should set up shop.
“It’s the gold rush right now,” said Chris Pumphrey, former president of the Elevate Douglas Economic Partnership, a public-private organization west of Atlanta.
After Pumphrey in recent years helped turn the warehousing hub of Douglas County into a magnet for data centers, he saw a surge in pleas for advice from local officials elsewhere. “Every community is different,” said Pumphrey, who has started informally consulting counterparts on the development. “At the end of the day, you have to have your economic priorities and also know those priorities shift.”
East of Columbus, Ohio, where New Albany has become another data-center hot spot, community development director Jennifer Chrysler last year gave so many presentations to out-of-town peers that it strained her small staff.
Negotiating financial incentives with deep-pocketed developers is a key part of the job. So is ensuring deals align with New Albany’s broader planning standards and goals, she said, adding: “It’s either take it or leave it.”
‘The Godfather of Data Centers’
In Virginia, Rizer has become the poster child of these unlikely power brokers by virtue of Loudoun County’s growth.
A data-center publication in 2024 sold an event as an “unforgettable evening” with Rizer, whom it labeled “The Godfather of Data Centers.” A conference that year advertised a cocktail reception in which the former radio DJ, “for one night only, is trading spreadsheets for beats,” with music “guaranteed to be booming like the Northern Virginia economy!”
There was even an episode of “Law & Order: Organized Crime” about a murder near a Loudoun County data center. A character named “Danny Lizer” made an appearance. So did a face-eating octopus. The money lines: “Whoever is giving out those permits is a VIP…Unless they’re dead.”
“Data-center celebrities are a little different than meeting Steven Tyler or Gwen Stefani or something,” Rizer said. He would know: His team’s 2025 report featured a photo of the Aerosmith frontman mugging alongside Rizer in his past life.
Not everyone is star-struck. As Wall Street and Washington bet big on the AI boom, national Democrats have increasingly viewed the infrastructure build-out with caution. Many communities are considering restrictions on the type of development that fueled Loudoun County’s ascendance.
“Buddy saw an opportunity and took it,” said Virginia Delegate John McAuliff, whose district partially overlaps with Loudoun County.
Elected last year as a data-center skeptic, the Democrat doesn’t fault Rizer for all of the subsequent concerns around data centers, including their potential to boost power costs. Surging demand from server farms has pushed the surrounding region’s electric-grid operator to the brink of a supply crisis.
Newly elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger staked her agenda in part on arresting a climb in energy costs. At the same time, McAuliff hopes to increase statewide oversight of deals struck between companies and local officials.
“It’s not their job to think about the state impact of their decisions,” McAuliff said. “That is the way we’ve set up our world, and I don’t necessarily know if it’s the right way.”
‘We are a department of yes’
“Data Center Alley” didn’t sprout from nothing. Loudoun County was already home to extensive underground cable and an internet exchange point, even drawing AOL’s headquarters in the 1990s. That infrastructure gave data centers the ability to transmit information at high speeds.
The AOL campus has largely been razed, in part to make way for the new digital economy. Nearby streets are lined with about 200 data-center buildings, their roughly 49 million square feet the equivalent of approximately 850 football fields. While the structures have few windows or signs of human life, they are chock-full of computers running AI applications, processing credit-card transactions and churning through other business data around the clock.
Corporate America’s shift to cloud computing and AI has increasingly fueled a construction spree that officials say hasn’t skipped a day in 15 years. So did a Virginia state sales-and-use tax exemption that ballooned to about $1.6 billion statewide last year, according to advocacy group Good Jobs First.
Rizer played down the need for additional incentives in Loudoun County, instead pointing to policies that made it an easy place to build.
A nuance in local laws helped developers construct data centers in areas zoned as office parks without input from the elected board of supervisors. Officials also approved a fast-track process that centralized many permitting powers within Rizer’s office.
“I wanted to control it. I wanted to make sure it was done right,” Rizer said. “We are a department of yes. We’re not a regulator.”
The benefits of the boom are clear. About 45% of county revenue comes from data centers, while Rizer estimates real property taxes are down 48 cents on the dollar.
Even so, as data centers elbowed into residential areas, complaints about noise and more pushed officials to tighten oversight. Projects now face a vote by the county board in an expanded review.
“Standard time, from start to finish, is probably in the neighborhood of two years, which is not a big deal because we’re not going to get power for seven years,” said Board of Supervisors Vice-Chair Mike Turner. The traditional power grid “is never going to catch up,” Turner added, a view Rizer doesn’t share.
Rizer doesn’t believe that data centers’ energy needs are currently pushing up Virginians’ bills, though he allows that they could in the future if not managed correctly. How to meet that demand is one of the key questions for officials elsewhere weighing whether to follow his lead.
While the 64-year-old believes Loudoun County will max out its land available for data centers in the coming years, he isn’t getting out of the game. Last year, he joined developer Avaio Digital Partners as an adviser. Rizer said he would leave the company if it ever had a project in northern Virginia to avoid conflicts of interest.
“I’m an evangelist for smart economic development,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a data-center evangelist in all instances. There are plenty of communities that come and talk to me and I tell them, ‘It’s probably not for you.”