East Fishkill Freezes Large Data Centers Until 2029
East Fishkill, New York, voted unanimously in late June to pause consideration of any new data center larger than 20 megawatts until July 2029.
A moratorium is a temporary halt. A megawatt is a unit of electric power. The 20-megawatt cutoff sets which projects fall under the pause.
The town has about 30,000 residents and sits 70 miles north of New York City. For nearly 50 years, it hosted IBM semiconductor research and manufacturing on a 460-acre campus The Guardian.
In early 2026, Treetop Companies was exploring an AI data center in the town. The proposal was described as roughly 1 gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, with more than 1 million square feet of buildings on about 143 acres. The vote for the moratorium was unanimous. Existing zoning did not allow construction of large data centers.
The corporate activity came through two separate channels. After buying property in East Fishkill, Treetop Development pursued approvals for warehouse development. Separately, Donovan Drive Holdings entered the interconnection queue of the New York Independent System Operator, or NYISO, for about 1,000 megawatts of electric service in East Fishkill. NYISO manages New York's bulk power grid, and its queue is the waiting list to connect large power users. That power request was submitted to NYISO, not to the town.
The size is clearest in electricity use. The proposed facility would consume more electricity than the entire city of Buffalo, which has about 275,000 people. East Fishkill has about 30,000.
As of May 2026, town official D'Alessandro said there was no application for a data center in East Fishkill Mid Hudson News. No application had been filed. The following month, the town board adopted the moratorium. Officials said the pause would allow study of potential impacts on water resources and local ecosystems. The measure lasts until July 1, 2029 Highlands Current.
Local review rests in part with the East Fishkill Planning Board. It is appointed by the Town Board and is responsible for reviewing and approving subdivisions and site plans and issuing special permits. The moratorium removes larger data centers from that review pipeline for the duration.
The IBM legacy is tied to the site. IBM's Building 323 in East Fishkill received the 2005 Top Fab Award from Semiconductor International magazine. The company had earlier announced plans to invest $700 million to build an advanced microchip development facility at its East Fishkill site.
The broader context here is about who decides what. An interconnection request signals load intent to the bulk power system, while land use authority stays with the municipality. That split explains how a 1,000-megawatt queue position can exist alongside a town record showing no formal site application. It also explains why the moratorium targets consideration at 20 megawatts, rather than construction itself.
Looking at what this sequence suggests for siting elsewhere, East Fishkill saw several pieces arrive in quick succession: a former industrial parcel, a warehouse approval path, a gigawatt-scale power request, and a zoning code that did not contemplate hyperscale load. The town froze the clock to assess water and ecological constraints. For developers and grid planners, queue access does not substitute for local entitlement, and communities measuring demand against a neighboring city of 275,000 will weigh megawatts as a governance question, not only an engineering one.
