West Virginia Certifies Boone County AI Data Center Campus

The West Virginia Department of Commerce has certified a large-scale artificial intelligence data center campus known as "Project Country Roads" in Boone County under the state's accelerated regulatory framework, according to reporting by Jess Bergsma for Hoodline.

In a formal certification letter signed by West Virginia Department of Commerce Secretary Matthew Herridge, state officials designated the Boone County development as a High Impact Data Center, triggering streamlined state-level oversight and property tax allocation rules designed to attract hyperscale compute facilities to reclaimed industrial land.

Reclaimed Hobet Mine Footprint and Power Projections

Public filings Reviewed by West Virginia Watch and cited by Hoodline place Project Country Roads at 5151 Shaffer Road in Danville, Boone County, across portions of the former Hobet surface coal mine site that previously underwent commercial solar energy redevelopment planning. The application was submitted by Houston-based LM Core Energy Services Inc., led by Chief Executive Officer Jarrette Lewis, and identifies artificial intelligence compute provider TensorWave as an anticipated tenant for the campus.

According to the state filings, the certified footprint encompasses roughly 3,557 acres, while broader planning documents reference a potential project scope reaching up to 8,000 acres and up to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Separate industry projections cited in the reporting estimate that the completed Boone County campus would require approximately 1.4 gigawatts of electrical power at full buildout.

House Bill 2014 and State vs. Local Authority

Project Country Roads qualified for state certification under House Bill 2014, legislation signed into law by Governor Patrick Morrisey in March 2025. Under House Bill 2014, any data center facility requiring at least 90 megawatts of electricity is classified as a high-impact project. That designation transfers primary siting, zoning, and regulatory authority from county and municipal governments to state agencies while establishing a specialized formula for distributing future property tax revenues.

The rapid use of the statutory fast track has prompted debate in the West Virginia Legislature over public disclosure standards. In January 2026, lawmakers rejected an amendment offered by Delegate Kayla Young of Kanawha County that would have required expanded public transparency and earlier community notification for certified data center developments. During legislative committee testimony, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Nicholas Preservati cautioned that mandating premature public disclosure could cause prospective developers to withdraw investments in favor of competing states.

At the municipal level, Charleston City Council member Emmett Pepper has introduced a proposed local ordinance aimed at preserving city oversight over potential data center construction within Charleston's municipal boundaries.

Mason County Hyperscale Buildout Context

The Boone County certification follows two major data center announcements in Mason County unveiled by state officials last month. In the first Mason County project, Starwood Digital Ventures committed an estimated $12 billion to build Project Tamarack, a 2.16-gigawatt data center campus designed to rely primarily on natural gas generation.

In the second Mason County development, global artificial intelligence infrastructure firm Nscale announced the Monarch Compute Campus—also referred to in state materials as the Monarch Cloud Campus—planned for an initial 1.3 to 2 gigawatts of capacity with potential scalability up to 8 gigawatts. Combined, state officials project the two Mason County campuses will generate approximately 4,375 construction jobs and 645 permanent jobs.