Lusby Got Land for a Regional Park in 2018. Here's Why It's Still Empty.

Calvert County took ownership of a Lusby property known as Offsite Area A on September 26, 2018. It came as part of a deal with Dominion Energy, which also put $4.1 million toward recreational development there. Eight years later, the county's own parks progress report says the Dominion Energy Regional Park is "on hold." It is listed in the Capital Improvement Program for FY 2029 to get more funding, and staff are "awaiting direction from the BOCC."

The land has belonged to the county all along. The park stalled because the plan costs far more than the county ever set aside for it. The one offer this year that would have closed that gap depended on selling the site for a data center. Calvert County has now paused data center approvals, so that offer is on hold too, and the park's timeline is tied up in a debate that started out being about something else.

What the county actually drew up

A county master plan revision dated November 30, 2020, named the facility the Dominion Energy Regional Park and listed what it would hold:

• An indoor recreation center
• Community event space
• Artificial-turf and natural-turf fields
• Tennis and pickleball courts
• Paved and natural trails, plus bike features
• A playground, pavilions and restrooms
• An amphitheater and open space

That plan puts the park at 10495 S. Solomons Island Road, and Cove Point Road appears on its site map. The land came to the county in connection with the Dominion Cove Point LNG project. Its neighbors are the county landfill, the Solomons wastewater treatment plant and the sheriff's shooting and training range, as The BayNet reported in April.

Reports give different sizes for the site. The county's 2019 memo describes about 100 donated acres inside a planned park of 179 acres. In 2026, the developer interested in the land called it about 133 acres.

The numbers that kept it on paper

The plan's features explain where the money went, or more exactly, where it never arrived. Here are the figures on the public record, with their dates:

Put the last two dollar figures side by side. If the $50 million estimate holds, the money set aside covers roughly a sixth of the park. "$8 million is not going to cover that park," Grasso told The BayNet. "$8 million will not give the people in District 1 what they deserve." In the same article, county officials said available funding wasn't enough to build the full park, which is why the site has stayed undeveloped.

That shortfall is why the park ended up in this year's data center fight.

How a data center pitch turned into a park pitch

In spring 2026, Natelli Holdings presented Appeal Digital Park. The proposal was a four-building data center campus, each building around 200,000 square feet, designed to support up to 300 megawatts. Its site was the same Offsite Area A tract. The developer offered a park as part of the deal. Natelli would buy the county's land and move the regional park plan to nearby property surrounded by Dowell Elementary, Mill Creek Middle and Patuxent High. According to the Calvert Recorder, the replacement site sits across Route 2/4 near those schools and would include turf and natural-grass fields.

To guarantee the park, Natelli proposed giving the county a $30 million construction bond. "If something happens and we go away, they're holding $30 million in a bond that they can call and build the park themselves," Thomas Natelli Jr. said, as The BayNet reported. Hance presented that as the payoff. "Natelli is going to build a park that the county hadn't had the resources to build in 10 or 12 years," he said. "That park would have cost us $50 million to build. He can build it for about $30 million."

This is how the funding gap and the data center proposal became one question. A park the county couldn't pay for would be paid for by selling the land meant to hold it. Commissioner Mike Hart described the trade to The BayNet in the same terms. Natelli would buy "off-site A, the future home of a park," build a park somewhere else, and swap it back to the county.

Some residents took it as a broken promise. One Lusby resident who spoke at the April presentation told The BayNet:

"They gave us the land, this is to be the new site for the Lusby park, but we never saw the money, and we never saw the park."

At that point nothing had been signed. Hance said the county was still working on property appraisals: "There's no deals, no deals for anything."

Why the moratorium pauses the park too

According to the county's announcement, the Board of County Commissioners held a public hearing on August 18, 2026, and then unanimously passed a six-month moratorium on site plan approvals for data center projects. It also stops the county from accepting new data center site plan applications during that period. It took effect August 28. Six months from that date runs into late February 2027.

Until the moratorium ends, the county can't approve or even accept a site plan for any data center, Appeal Digital Park included, so the land sale behind the replacement park can't go forward either. The county's parks progress report still lists the original park as "on hold" for FY 2029.

Two other headlines from this year deal with different sites, and they are easy to mix up with this one:

1. Amazon's Calvert Cliffs proposal is withdrawn. On August 4, 2026, Calvert County announced that Amazon Data Services had formally withdrawn its Calvert Technology Center Conceptual Site Development Plan application and would not pursue the site near Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. That was a separate project from Appeal Digital Park and the park land.
2. The Constellation agreement is a power contract. On September 30, 2026, Constellation announced a 20-year agreement with Amazon covering 690 megawatts from Calvert Cliffs. It includes a 190-megawatt uprate expected online between 2030 and 2032, as part of a plant investment of more than $3 billion. Constellation says the plant's electricity will keep flowing to the PJM regional grid, not directly to Amazon data centers. Nothing in the announcement involves Offsite Area A.

The longer-term rules are still being written. The Calvert County Planning Commission's October 21 agenda included a work session on zoning text amendment TA 26-31, which affects the Industrial section of the zoning ordinance, Article 18. The agenda listed it as a work session, not a public hearing. When the moratorium was announced, the county said commissioners would discuss possible zoning changes on data centers as a permitted use at a future meeting.

What to watch between now and spring

Since the park's funding and the data center rules are now tied together, these are the dates and documents that will decide what happens next:

1. TA 26-31 moving from work session to hearing. A public hearing at the Planning Commission or the Board of County Commissioners would be the first formal step toward permanent data center rules.
2. Late February 2027. That's when the six-month moratorium that started August 28 runs out, unless commissioners act before then.
3. The FY2028 budget cycle. In 2026, the county's staff-recommended budget presentation came out on March 24. A similar spring timeline would show whether the Dominion Energy Regional Park keeps its FY 2029 slot or moves.
4. Any BOCC direction on the park itself. The parks department has said it is waiting on exactly that.

The county posts commission agendas and data center updates at choosecalvert.com/DataCenters.

If you live in Chesapeake Ranch Estates and want to know how a park on hold, a land sale proposal or a zoning change could matter to your street, I'm happy to go over it with you. I've spent years reading site plans from the builder's side of the table, and I bring that to every conversation at Hammer & Heels Realtor. And when you're curious what your own home is worth right now, get your instant home valuation.