Linden, New Jersey has banned AI data centers, joining a growing list of New Jersey municipalities moving to block the facilities before any are proposed within their borders, News12 New Jersey reported.
Linden is a Union County city with a heavy industrial base along the Jersey Turnpike and Arthur Kill, the kind of zoned-industrial, power-adjacent land that data-center developers typically target. Its ban follows the same pattern The RFI Wire has tracked across the state: more than 100 New Jersey towns have now adopted moratoriums or outright bans on data-center development, almost always before a specific project is filed, as a preemptive zoning move rather than a response to an active application.
For contractors who read the data-center buildout as a source of electrical, mechanical and sitework capacity, the New Jersey map keeps narrowing. Every new municipal ban removes a parcel of industrial-zoned land from the list of places a hyperscale developer can realistically site a project without a fight — and in a market where New York State's Executive Order 62 already pauses new large data centers statewide pending a environmental review, New Jersey's town-by-town bans are closing off the other side of the region's buildable land at the same time.
News12's report did not name a specific proposed project in Linden that prompted the ban, and city officials were not quoted beyond the vote itself in the available coverage.
What to do next
If your shop is positioning for data-center electrical, mechanical or sitework scopes in New Jersey, cross-check any target municipality against the ban list before spending estimating hours on it — a zoning fight can kill a job before it's ever bid. Connecticut and the handful of New Jersey towns that haven't yet acted are where the pipeline still has room to move.