Cherry Hill NJ data center prohibited-use ordinance (2026)

Cherry Hill Township, N.J. (Camden County) — zoning ordinance adopted unanimously by the Township Council on July 28, 2026, listing DATA CENTERS AS A NON-PERMITTED LAND USE within the township's borders. INSTRUMENT CLASS: a permanent prohibited-use designation, not a moratorium — no sunset, no study period, no follow-on regulation required. DEFINITIONAL CARVE-OUT, the feature worth copying: the ordinance distinguishes prohibited data centers, meaning facilities used for artificial intelligence or cloud storage, from SMALL SERVER ROOMS used by standalone businesses for their own file storage, which remain permitted. A prohibition drafted without that line reaches ordinary commercial IT infrastructure and becomes unadministrable. PATH TO A FUTURE FACILITY: because the use is not permitted anywhere, a developer would require a USE VARIANCE from the township zoning board — in New Jersey practice a 'd' variance under N.J.S.A. 40:55D-70(d), the most demanding land-use approval available and one requiring an enhanced affirmative showing. STATED RATIONALE (Mayor David Fleisher): pre-emption rather than response — 'We don't think that Cherry Hill should be a guinea pig'; the township acted 'to make sure that we eliminated a problem before it became one'. STATE CONTEXT: New Jersey has the densest municipal data center ban wave in the United States, with 50+ towns prohibiting the use outright by late August 2026, running alongside the state's four-pillar framework (New Jersey S3379/A4096 data center transparency (2026), S731/A796 — Data center ratepayer protection and grid-demand). LITIGATION EXPOSURE, recorded: developers have begun challenging New Jersey local bans in court, characterising them as products of 'public hysteria' — a separate backlog item tracked for that dispute.