First built in 1972, the Landover Mall once featured a Hecht’s, a Sears, a Woolworth’s, and a six-screen movie theater. But by 1998, the Sears and Woolworth’s were gone, and after the Hecht’s closed in 2002, the mall was abandoned entirely before being demolished in 2006.
The 90-acre plot has since sat completely empty for 20 years. Just an asphalt block punctuated by overgrown grass and weeds.
Then in 2024, the developer who owns the land won approval to build a $5 billion data center that would have supported 1,600 jobs in Prince George’s County, paying $123.5 million a year in labor income, and netting $13.7 million a year in local tax revenue.
But when Taylor Frazier McCollum, a local esthetician, heard about the plan, she took action. “I was like, ‘Oh, hell no,'” Frazier McCollum told National Public Radio. “Why would you want to bring water-polluting, diesel-generating data centers right down the street from where people live, work, play? It just didn’t make sense to me.”
Taylor Frazier McCollum. (Washington Examiner illustration; Courtesy of Lerner Enterprises)
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Taylor Frazier McCollum. (Washington Examiner illustration; Courtesy of Lerner Enterprises)
Where Frazier McCollum got the idea that the Landover data center would run on diesel generators or pollute local waterways is a mystery. There is no evidence for either claim to be found in the project’s plans.
Maybe Frazier McCollum got the talking points from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the activist group she partnered with to collect over 20,000 signatures opposing not just the Landover data center but all data centers countywide.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is an openly Marxist organization bankrolled by Shanghai resident Neville Roy Singham. Singham is well known for his close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and his financing of groups such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation that promote China’s interests abroad.
And why does China care if an abandoned mall in suburban Washington, D.C., becomes a data center?
Beijing has a strategic interest in seeing American data center construction stop completely. Data centers provide the computing power that drives everything from shopping on Amazon and streaming YouTube to training AI models. Slowing their construction gives Chinese companies more time to catch up across the global digital economy. China, Singham, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation have every incentive to lie about the Landover project relying on diesel power that pollutes the water.
In the meantime, Frazier McCollum has been missing shifts at work to protest data center construction across Prince George’s County. Now she needs help paying for a new roof on the house she lives in, which belongs to her grandfather.
In September, she went before the county council to advocate for a fund for roof repairs. But Prince George’s County is facing some hard times. The NFL’s Washington Commanders, whose current stadium sits across the highway from the Landover Mall site, are moving back to D.C. Last year, the local Six Flags amusement park closed. And thousands of federal workers who reside in the county have lost their jobs. The county simply does not have the revenue to create new programs to fix people’s roofs.
A $34 MILLION DOLLAR MONUMENT TO CALIFORNIA’S DECLINE
Maybe Frazier McCollum should have thought of that before enlisting communist China’s help in killing an infrastructure project that would have brought in $13.7 million a year in tax revenue.
You can fix a lot of roofs with $13.7 million a year.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
