Bridgewater's Township Council voted unanimously on Nov. 5 to strip data centers from the list of allowed uses at a vacant office property along Route 22, closing off a path that the township itself had opened just last year. The amendment to the Greymark Office Tract Redevelopment Plan designates data centers as a specifically prohibited use at the 1200 Route 22 site, rather than simply removing them as an option.
The vote came after a public hearing on Ordinance 2621, according to Patch. Bridgewater had adopted the Greymark plan on April 24, 2025, opening the door to a data center at the former office building, and Thursday's reversal effectively closes it. Councilman Timothy Ring noted that any data-center proposal pursued outside the redevelopment plan would still have to come back before the governing body, go through master-plan consistency review, include public hearings, and later return to the planning board with a land-use application, the outlet reported.
A Reversal From Last Year's Redevelopment Plan
The about-face illustrates how quickly sentiment around data centers has shifted in New Jersey towns over the past year. What was once seen as a potential redevelopment win for an empty office tract has become, in Bridgewater's case, a use the council now wants walled off entirely at that address.
Bridgewater's move adds it to a rapidly growing list of New Jersey municipalities taking similar steps. More than 100 municipalities statewide have adopted bans or moratoriums on data centers in 2026, driven by concerns over electricity demand, water use, noise, and neighborhood effects, according to NJ.com. Cranbury in Middlesex County approved its own ban on Oct. 13, and Colts Neck adopted an ordinance the next day that explicitly prohibits facilities used for AI, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency mining, the outlet reported. Stanhope, Hamburg, and Little Egg Harbor have introduced similar ordinances, per the same report.
Polling Shows Opposition Peaks Close To Home
A Rutgers-Eagleton poll surveyed 1,004 New Jersey adults from Sept. 24 to 27 and found opposition to data centers is sharpest when the facility would land close to home. Seventy-two percent of respondents said they opposed a data center in their own town or city, compared with 64% opposed to one in a neighboring county and 62% opposed statewide, according to the poll.
Support followed the inverse pattern: just 21% backed a data center in their own town or city, rising to 26% for a neighboring county and 30% for New Jersey generally, the poll found. The same survey reported that 55% of New Jerseyans believe the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, versus 11% who said benefits win out and 19% who called it roughly even.
Why So Much Local Pushback
Hyperscale data centers demand substantial electrical grid capacity and can require millions of gallons of water for cooling systems, concerns that have become central to local debates over where such facilities belong. Backup diesel generators and cooling-fan noise near residential neighborhoods have also factored into why towns like Bridgewater are drawing firmer lines around industrial-scale computing infrastructure.
The Rutgers-Eagleton Poll was conducted with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, giving statistical weight to a pattern that has shown up repeatedly as more New Jersey towns weigh similar ordinances this year. Bridgewater's decision to designate data centers as prohibited at the Greymark site is a data-center restriction adopted in 2026.
