Cherry Hill Township Council voted Tuesday unanimously to adopt Ordinance 2026-10 on second reading, formally banning large-scale data centers from every zoning district in the township.
Mayor David Fleisher said at the meeting that he and the council are taking proactive steps to ensure that increased energy demands, significant water usage, noise, and air pollution from data centers do not affect the community.
The law targets facilities exceeding 100,000 square feet used primarily for AI, cloud storage and subscription-based software. It adds data centers to Cherry Hill's list of prohibited uses alongside airfields, junkyards, incinerators and mobile-home dwelling units. Smaller server rooms that occupy no more than 10% of a building's gross floor area and do not provide cloud computing or hosting for third parties remain permitted.
Drafted to survive lawsuits
Consultant Christopher N. Dochney, a certified city planner at Artheon's Camden office, briefed the council on language crafted to head off legal challenges. Two other New Jersey municipalities already face developer lawsuits over their bans, according to GovTech: Monroe Township in Gloucester County is defending a $300 million federal suit from Hexa Builders LLC, and Andover Township was sued July 10.
Dochney explained that Cherry Hill's zoning code permits manufacturing, which could create a loophole.
"A clever attorney could argue that, well, you allow manufacturing, which is processing materials, and a data center is just processing digital materials, therefore it's a permitted use wherever manufacturing is permitted," Dochney told the council. "We're trying to avoid situations like that."
The ordinance explicitly defines manufacturing as the processing of physical materials, not digital ones. Any developer who still wants to build a data center would need a use variance from the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Why the ban
Artheon's July 3 planning report, commissioned by the township, found that a single large data center can consume about 100 megawatts of power, equivalent to 100,000 households. A medium-sized facility uses roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling, equivalent to 1,000 homes. Cherry Hill's population is 79,965.
The report recommended classifying data centers as "noxious and nuisance uses" and concluded they provide few local jobs relative to their size, as reported by 70and73.com.
No data center developer had approached Cherry Hill with a proposal as of the vote, Fleisher told the Inquirer.
Opposition and context
Cherry Hill joins more than 25 New Jersey municipalities that have passed data center bans or restrictions, including Millville, Red Bank, Asbury Park, and Logan Township. In South Jersey, Mansfield and Chesterfield townships in Burlington County approved bans in July, and Medford Township did so in June.
As we reported July 21, the council introduced the ordinance on first reading July 13. Councilwoman Jennifer Apell said at the July 13 meeting, "I'm very pleased that we're getting ahead of this in Cherry Hill."
What happens next
The ordinance takes effect 20 days after adoption, placing the effective date at August 17. After that, any data center proposal would require a use variance from the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
