The forum will start at 6:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Hart Community Center at 408 Canal St. in the city. Organizers say the meeting will start with an eight-minute video from the Piedmont Environmental Council, followed by opening statements from panelists selected for the event.
The majority of the forum will be for questions from the audience, primarily written questions.
City Council members have made it clear that they're hoping to move as swiftly as possible to bring data centers to the city, including a data center campus in Celebrate Virginia and others along Gateway Boulevard next to the Great Oaks neighborhood.
Council members say that data centers are coming with or without the city's involvement, and that the city badly needs the potential revenue stream the centers are expected to bring instead of seeing all of it go to neighboring jurisdictions.
Some residents have expressed concerns about the speed with which the city is moving and wonder if environmental and other concerns are being adequately addressed.
"We must not compromise the city's long-term needs for short-term gains," Jason Towery said at a recent public hearing.
Resident Sue Sergeant and others said they wonder what the rush is. "You're intoxicated by data centers," Sergeant said at the recent hearing.
City staff members insist that they are considering all those factors, and Vice Mayor Charlie Frye disputed suggestions that the city is moving too fast. "Data centers is not a new conversation for us," Frye said at the hearing. "We've been trying to get here since 2018."
The forum panelists include Daren Shumate of Shumate Engineering; Tracy Vargo, a principal partner at Stonebridge; Brent Hunsinger of Friends of the Rappahannock; and Eric Bonds, a University of Mary Washington professor and co-founder of Fossil Free Fredericksburg.
Former council member Matt Kelly, one of the organizers, said Mayor Kerry Devine has been invited to the gathering.
© 2025 The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
