Applicant Starwood Digital Ventures is appealing a rejection to its plans to build a data center in Delaware’s Coastal Zone.

On February 3, the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control designated Starwood’s “Project Washington” data center as a “heavy industrial use.”

This effectively rejected Starwood’s proposed data center, which concerned two land parcels in the state’s Coastal Zone at Hamburg Road and Governor Lea Road. Any properties with a “heavy industrial” designation are prohibited from development in the zone.

The zone stretches across the state’s coastline and includes some areas further inland that are located around important bodies of water.

Starwood’s appeal, submitted to the State Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board earlier last week on February 17, argues that data centers do not exhibit the characteristics of a heavy industrial property and that it should not have been classified as such.

It also alleges that the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control made procedural and legal errors in making its determination.

Starwood Digital Ventures, a subsidiary of Starwood Capital Group, proposed the project in July 2025 with landowner New Castle Campus Development LLC, an entity tied to PBF Energy.

The first phase would include six 500,000-square-foot (46,450 sqm), two-story buildings for a total of about 3 million square feet; the second phase would see two 500,000 sq ft, two-story buildings and three 700,000 sq ft (65,030 sqm), two-story buildings developed, totaling around 3.1 million sq ft (288,000 sqm).

Delaware has a minimal data center market. DataCenterMap lists just five facilities in the First State, four of which are in Wilmington, and none close to the scale Starwood is proposing. US colocation firm DāSTOR operates in the area.