Project Details

The project site is vacant land within the existing Dickerson energy campus, historically used to support power plant operations. It is surrounded by long-established heavy industrial and utility uses, including transmission infrastructure, substations, energy generation facilities, and the County’s waste-to-energy operations.

    • Property Owner: Terra Energy, FL-based real estate asset management firm

    • Developer: Atmosphere Data Centers (Atmosphere-DC), a CA-based data center developer/operator

    • Status: Atmosphere-DC is contract purchaser of a ~110-acre parcel from Terra Energy

    • Address: 21200 Martinsburg Rd, Dickerson, MD

    • Subject Site: ~110 ac. within a 750+ ac. campus

    • Former Use: Equipment storage warehouses and construction laydown yard supporting coal and gas power plant operations

    • Surrounding Uses:

      • Pepco electrical substations and transmission infrastructure

      • Rockland Capital combustion turbine power plant

      • Montgomery County waste-to-energy facility and composting facility

      • Westland Ash Site (GenOn)

      • FirstEnergy/Potomac Edison transmission line

    • Zoning and Use: Heavy Industrial (IH) with data center as a conditional use (CU)

    • Prior Approval: CU approved in late 2024 for data center campus on ~ 110-acre site

    • Current Application: A revised CUP application for a data center campus on ~110-acre site. Includes site plan, landscaping, forest conservation and stormwater management plans, now under review

    • Related Development: Adjacent Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project proceeding through mandatory referral.

    • Campus includes five data center buildings

    • Accessory administrative, electrical, storage, water treatment, and wastewater treatment buildings and associated infrastructure

    • Surface parking areas

    • Up to 250 employees on-site over multiple shifts during a 24-hour period.

    • Reuses a long-standing industrial and utility site

    • Supports critical digital and cloud infrastructure

    • Provides a long-term tax base with limited demand on public services

    • Lower-intensity and more environmentally responsible use than historic operations

    • Expected to generate over 1,000 construction jobs and 150–250 permanent jobs at full build-out

    • Low traffic generation, noise, and visual impacts compared to other allowed industrial or commercial uses

    • Support Montgomery County’s economic development priorities, including attracting companies that rely on secure, high-capacity computing infrastructure

  • Projected to generate consistent, long-term tax revenue for Montgomery County and the State of Maryland

    • Traffic generation significantly lower than historic power plant operations

    • Use of existing road access that supported previously higher traffic volumes

    • Site is secured 24/7
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