NJ.com published a map this weekend of every AI data center proposed, approved, or under construction in New Jersey — and for a tri-state contractor pool that's been chasing this work since the first hyperscale announcements landed, it's the first time anyone has tried to put the whole state's pipeline on one page.
We've tracked this fight piece by piece for weeks: Kenilworth's generator dispute, Bristol's zoning fights, the DataOne generator standoff the state is now letting run another 45 days past its own deadline. What NJ.com's map adds isn't a new project — it's the shape of the whole board at once, town by town, letting a contractor see for the first time how many of these fights are happening simultaneously across the state rather than one headline at a time.
New Jersey is not under New York's Executive Order 62 pause — the state is judging each project on its own planning-board and zoning record, project by project, which is exactly why the fights look so scattered: Kenilworth says no, Bristol says no, somewhere else says yes, and there's no single state gate deciding it the way there now is across the Hudson. That makes New Jersey the more active near-term construction market of the two states for anyone chasing data-center electrical, mechanical, or sitework scope — but it also means every site is its own separate approval fight with its own timeline, and a map is not a permit.
For a trade contractor, the use of this is triage: a map that shows which towns have already said yes, which are mid-fight, and which haven't been asked yet is worth more than a single project announcement, because it tells you where to put your business-development hours this month instead of chasing a project still years from a shovel.
None of this is construction yet. A planning-board approval or a spot on NJ.com's map is not a permit, a GC, or a start date — treat every site on it as a lead to verify against the township's own record before you spend estimating hours on it.