Never In My Wildest Dreams!

Mount Airy Real Estate by Maureen Nichols, REALTOR®
Team Bonnie and Maureen of RE/MAX Realty Plus

When I first started selling real estate in 1989, the office had a full time receptionist who took messages on pink message pads. From our landline or a phone booth, we called in during office hours to retrieve these messages. We entered listing data via teletype devices in three separate MLS systems so our Mount Airy listings would be seen by agents in all directions. I was young and very forward thinking back then. My dad was very “into” computers and tried to share his excitement with his kids, and maybe some of it rubbed off on me. But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined where we are today with technology!! I could talk forever about how technology has changed throughout the past 35 years – but every single one of us has experienced the advances and has, at one time or another, thought: Never in my wildest dreams!

At a recent Realtor® Association meeting, Justin Matney of Quantum Loophole was our featured speaker. In addition to being a licensed Realtor®, Justin is the Director of Resource Integration at Quantum Loophole.

The Quantum Loophole Campus is over 2100 acres, located in Adamstown, at the former site of East Alcoa, the aluminum smelting plant. This campus is under 30 minutes from Mount Airy, and 20 miles from the Ashburn (VA) interconnection ecosystem. When Justin said approximately 90 percent of the world’s internet traffic travels through the data centers in Loudon County, Virginia, it boggled my mind. Not just America’s internet traffic, the entire world’s internet traffic.

So I thought: It’s a whirring, clanging, brightly-lit, energy-sucking data center in the middle of beautiful southwestern Frederick County – it’s a commercial behemoth with mountains to the west and a river to the south and gorgeous rolling farm fields many commuters from Mount Airy pass through every day. Surely better than a smelting plant, I thought, but it’s still a data center.

There is so much more to this story, however. I listened. Quantum Loophole is a developer of a first-one-of-its kind project – that will indeed be a data center – but one that is working toward building a planned data center community with a negative carbon footprint, with over 600 acres of nature reserve with stream and waterway protection, a wildlife corridor and more. Here is an excerpt from their website: “The Quantum Frederick project is based on efficient design for sustainable power and water use, investments in robust fiber connectivity, a nature-first design aesthetic to protect views and reduce visibility from public roadways, and includes thoughtful preservation of existing historic structures.”

Their 40+/- mile network is planned for the long run, for future generations. They will place more than 235,000 strands of fiber (this is mind-boggling, too!) in this network loop to connect the Frederick campus with Virginia. It’s incredible “stuff” – and it’s happening in our own backyard!

Check them out: https://quantumloophole.com/frederick-maryland/