East Fishkill, Once Home to IBM, Adopts Three-Year Data Center Moratorium After AI Campus Backlash

The proposal emerged in early 2026, when news broke that Treetop Companies was exploring plans for what could become one of the largest AI datacenters in the country: a roughly 1-gigawatt campus spanning more than 1 million sq ft across about 143 acres. The backlash began before a single permit application was filed with the municipal government. Residents attended town board meetings, organized rallies and advocated for a temporary ban. Even before any plans were drawn up, East Fishkill’s existing zoning laws did not allow for construction of large data centers. The town still issued the three-year moratorium, which the Guardian described as a sign of extreme ire against data centers.

The saga began after Treetop Development purchased property in East Fishkill and initially pursued approvals for a warehouse development. Residents later discovered that the company, through local property owner Donovan Drive Holdings, had entered the queue to have a project approved that would use approximately 1,000 megawatts of electrical service, an amount more consistent with a large-scale AI datacenter than a warehouse. That request was not submitted to the town. It was submitted to the New York Independent System Operator’s interconnection queue. NYISO is an independent organization responsible for managing New York’s high-voltage power grid, meaning any company that wants to build a massive new project must formally ask NYISO for permission to connect to the grid.

For residents, the NYISO filing quickly raised concerns. The proposed datacenter would consume more electricity than the entire town of Buffalo, which has about 275,000 people; East Fishkill is home to just 30,000. Melissa Hoffmann, an East Fishkill resident and organizer with a local chapter of Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy nonprofit, said residents had been speaking out against the proposal to stop any application from coming into the town. Because no formal application had been filed with East Fishkill, town officials repeatedly stressed that there was nothing before the planning board to review or reject.

East Fishkill supervisor Nick D’Alessandro wrote on Facebook in June that there was no application before the town and that there had never been an application for a datacenter. He later took down the post. His office did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. He stressed that standalone datacenters were “not even listed as a permissible use” under the town’s zoning laws. Nonetheless, in June the board banned their construction for three years “to give our community certainty and allow time for further study and discussion.” Hoffmann said months of public pressure ultimately convinced the town board to extend what had initially been discussed as a seven-month pause into a three-year moratorium.

The fight in East Fishkill is part of a growing divide, according to the Guardian. Both rural towns and communities that once eagerly welcomed high-tech development are increasingly questioning whether AI infrastructure adds enough local benefit to justify its enormous appetite for electricity, water and land. Tanya Radford, an East Fishkill resident and professor, said: “I just think that we’re at this moment where things are happening very quickly, we need to get our ducks in a row and think about the various ways in which datacenters and new energy usage will affect our long-term community cohesiveness, environmental quality, and character.” She added: “This is not an anti-tech town. I’m an educator. I use technology.”

East Fishkill has often been described as an “innovation hub,” making the opposition remarkable because the town has not been hostile toward new technology. IBM transformed the town during the latter half of the 20th century into one of the nation’s leading semiconductor manufacturing centers, employing thousands of workers and laying the foundation for what is now iPark 84, home to mixed-use commercial and residential facilities. Former IBM facilities remain a defining part of the local economy, and iPark continues to house technology companies.

Editor's Summary

East Fishkill, a New York town that once housed IBM semiconductor operations, imposed a three-year moratorium on large data centers after residents objected to a proposed 1-gigawatt AI campus by Treetop Companies. The developer has appealed the ban, while local officials say no formal data center application was ever filed with the town. The dispute reflects broader questions about the local costs of AI infrastructure, including electricity, water and land use.