Gaithersburg, MD Data Centers & Crypto Mining: Data Center Zoning & Siting (2026)

The City of Gaithersburg is one of only two municipalities in Montgomery County, along with Rockville, that exercises its own independent planning and zoning authority rather than deferring to the county's charter zoning code. Its Chapter 24 zoning ordinance, adopted by Ordinance No. O-5-24 on July 15, 2024, governs data centers directly. 10-1, the Non-Residential Zoning Districts Comprehensive Principal Use Permissions Table, lists 'Data center or data/crypto currency mining' as a conditional use, marked with the conditional-use symbol, in only two of the city's six standard non-residential zones: I-1 Light Industrial and I-3 Industrial Office Park.

The same row carries a dash in the CB Commercial Buffer, C-1 Local Commercial, C-2 General Commercial and combined E-1/E-2 Urban Employment columns, meaning the use is prohibited outright there. 1-1, the residential-district permissions table, or on the floating-zone table covering the CBD Central Business District, CD Corridor Development, MCD Mixed-Commercial Development and MXD Mixed-Use Development zones, both of which list a flat dash for the same use, so it is barred from every residential and floating zone in the city as well. 4, defines a data center or data/cryptocurrency mining facility as a physical location that stores computing machines and their related hardware equipment, and that either stores a company's digital data or provides the mining function for cryptocurrency, so a crypto-mining warehouse is treated identically to a conventional server farm for siting purposes.

Because the use is conditional, not by-right, even inside I-1 or I-3 an operator must secure conditional-use approval, which under Chapter 24's site-plan articles typically requires a site development plan reviewed by the planning division and planning commission before a building permit can issue. A prospective operator should confirm a parcel's zoning designation on the official city zoning map before committing to a site, since neither Montgomery County zoning nor a neighboring municipality's rules apply inside Gaithersburg's limits.