New Brunswick officials have sent proposed data center zoning and land-use regulations to the city's Planning Board for review, a move that would require mandatory site-plan applications, indoor siting, and buffer distances from schools, homes and conservation land. The proposed rules touch two sections of city code and come even though no developer has approached the city about building a data center since a prior proposal was scrapped earlier this year.
What the Proposed Rules Would Require
The changes involve Title 17, New Brunswick's zoning code, and Title 16, its land-development code, according to TAPinto. Title 17 governs permitted uses and buildings and the conditions attached to their development, and the proposed amendments to it would set standards for data centers covering noise, water use, energy generation and power capacity, along with where such facilities could be located. The draft rules would also require data centers to be sited indoors and would establish separation distances from schools, residential zones and conservation areas, per the same report.
On the Title 16 side, which covers developer procedures such as review requirements, application materials and evaluation, the proposed amendment would require data centers to submit a mandatory site-plan application. That review process would let officials examine a proposed facility's effects on its surroundings before any project could move forward, the outlet reported.
Planning Board Can Recommend, Not Decide
The city's Planning Board is scheduled to review the regulations for consistency with New Brunswick's master plan and make recommendations, but the board cannot enact the ordinances itself. Once it reports its findings, the City Council will decide whether to adopt the proposed measures, and the council could approve or reject them; if adopted, the ordinances would become law, the report notes.
City officials have described the proposed rules as an interim measure while New Brunswick conducts a broader review of long-term land-use planning, a process expected to take four to six months. New Brunswick Mayor Jim Cahill announced in September that the city had retained Bignell Planning Consultants Inc., a Woodbridge-based firm, to review data center planning and prepare recommendations. Cahill said the comprehensive review will include professional planning, engineering, environmental, infrastructure and legal analysis, according to TAPinto.
No Developer Interest Since Jersey Avenue Plan Changed
Dan Dominguez, New Brunswick's director of policy and development and city planner, said no one has reached out in writing, by phone or by any other means to express interest in developing a data center in the city. Dominguez said there has been no application or inquiry about such a project since the Jersey-Sandford redevelopment proposal, the outlet reported.
After the Jersey-Sandford redevelopment plan was amended, the city began writing its own data-center rules. The New Brunswick City Council amended the Jersey-Sandford redevelopment plan in February to remove data centers as a permitted use, following discussion of a proposal to allow a data center on part of the 22-acre tract of four contiguous parcels along Jersey Avenue. According to jerseydigs.com, the redevelopment plan was ultimately amended to swap in a public park in place of a proposed 27,000-square-foot data center. The council voted 5-0 to amend the plan and again to adopt the ordinance reflecting the new development plan, which now calls for four of the 22 acres to become a public park alongside 660 apartments, 10% of which will be set aside as affordable housing.
New Brunswick Joins a Statewide Wave
New Brunswick's move fits into a much larger pattern across New Jersey, where municipalities have been adopting bans, restrictions or temporary development halts amid concerns raised by critics over electricity and water demand, noise from cooling equipment and generators, and broader neighborhood and environmental effects. The Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions reported that municipalities had passed 122 data center bans or restrictions as of October 28, with 13 additional measures introduced statewide by that date, per TAPinto.
Other towns have already taken more aggressive stances. Raritan adopted an ordinance in September prohibiting data centers in all zoning districts, while Bethlehem approved a townshipwide ban and Warren adopted its own prohibition in June. Galloway Township established a six-month data center development moratorium in July. Statewide, nj.com reported that more than 100 New Jersey municipalities had adopted bans or moratoriums this year, including Cranbury and Colts Neck, which approved new restrictions in back-to-back days in October; Colts Neck's October 14 ordinance made an existing prohibition explicit for facilities for AI, cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining. Stanhope, Hamburg and Little Egg Harbor introduced similar prohibition ordinances the same month, according to the same report.
Not every town has gone that route. In Vineland, the Planning Board approved the next phase of a 2.6-million-square-foot AI data-center project tied to a five-year, $17.4 billion agreement to supply computing power to Microsoft, a decision nj.com described as settled in a 90-minute meeting with sparse public attendance. At the state level, lawmakers have announced plans for more than a dozen data-center bills this legislative session, according to politico.com, which also noted that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul became the first governor to impose a statewide data-center moratorium, in July. New Jersey's Economic Development Authority has said it offers technical assistance to municipalities evaluating proposed data-center projects, directing questions on grid capacity, interconnection, electricity rates, water, air permitting and environmental justice to the relevant state agencies.
