By Sunayana Prabhu
HOLMDEL – Although the township committee voted unanimously at its Aug. 11 meeting to ban data centers in the municipality, a legal loophole could allow one application to proceed.
Somerset, the owner of Bell Works, filed an application July 24 with the planning board seeking preliminary and final site plan approval for a 108,000-square-foot, 40-megawatt data center facility. The data center is proposed in an existing two-story building at 101 Crawford Corner Road. The site is located off the ring road on Bell Works’ campus behind the main building.
The ban on data centers was first introduced July 21, but had to go through administrative processes, including a public hearing, before the final adoption Aug. 11.
Somerset filed its application with the planning board July 24 – before final adoption but after the introduction of the ban.
Somerset’s application has not yet been approved, but because the planning board deemed it administratively complete before the ban was adopted, the company has invoked a state “time of application” rule to object to the ban.
Township attorney Michael Collins explained during the Aug. 11 meeting that the time-of-application rule locks the zoning in place when a complete application is filed. Later zoning changes don’t apply and so the ban may not hold in the case of Somerset’s application, he said. “Somerset’s site plan application, from a legal standpoint, will have the benefit of zoning prior to consideration of this ordinance based upon the law,” Collins said.
This legal loophole is further compounded by Bell Works’ 2013 redevelopment agreement, which included data centers as a permitted use.
Now, the township must follow due process as the planning board reviews the application and then determines the course of action.
Decade-old Loophole
The township signed a redevelopment agreement with Somerset for the Bell Works property in 2013. The agreement is tied to the Alcatel-Lucent Redevelopment Plan. That plan includes language permitting data centers on land outside the building’s ring road, “which is a permitted use under the redevelopment plan,” Collins explained.
Mayor Rocco Impreveduto added that the planning board is a quasi-judicial body. It still has to evaluate the application on its merits. Both Impreveduto and Collins repeatedly said they could not comment on the Bell Works proposal because it is now before the planning board and subject to legal constraints, including a longstanding redevelopment agreement with Somerset.
Somerset’s Proposal
The project is called the Data Center at Bell Works. Somerset wants to subdivide roughly 12 acres out of its larger campus to create the site. If approved, Collins said, the data center would be limited to roughly the footprint of a building behind the main Bell Works structure – not the broader campus.
Plans also include a roughly 26,340-square-foot generator yard and two loading docks. Additional site work covers driveways, landscaping, lighting, utility upgrades and stormwater management. The application seeks minor subdivision approval, plus preliminary and final major site plan approval.
The developers are also asking for a parking variance. The plan includes 34 spaces; the ordinance requires 72.
Residents Push Back
Residents packed the meeting room and lined up to speak during the public hearing.
Several residents raised concerns about noise, water use, rising electricity rates, groundwater depletion and the effects on nearby Indian Hill Elementary School.
Resident Francine Campis supported the townwide ban. “JCP&L is asking for an 8% hike in electricity already, and I’ve heard data centers consume a lot of electricity,” she said, adding she doesn’t “want to pay for this data center.”
Campis was also skeptical about the timing of JCP&L’s new high-voltage poles installed around town “all of a sudden,” followed by Bell Works’ application for a data center. “My taxes have not gone down or not stayed the same since Bell Works came to town. So, chasing rateables, what did it do for the residents? Zero,” Campis said. “The fact that they would think that they should come here and object to our town passing an ordinance to stop data centers is outrageous.”
Resident Serena Didi was among the minority that supported data centers in town. She called an outright ban “too extreme.” Didi urged the committee to consider a temporary moratorium instead, paired with negotiated community benefits such as solar power or additional tax revenue.
Former planning board member Ron Emma drew comparisons to the township’s earlier fight over the highly contentious sewer project for the former Vonage site redevelopment on Newman Springs Road and warned that the township committee is going to similarly support the planning board’s eventual approval for Bell Works’ data center.
“This ordinance tonight about banning data centers, though it’s a good one, it’s obviously going to come too late for a data center on the largest development that we have in town, which is Bell Works,” Emma said. “I’m an ex-planning board member, so I know how that works. It’s going to get rubber-stamped on the planning board. It’s going to come to you. You’re going to say it was approved by the planning board, and it’s going to get approved. It was the same thing with Vonage.”
Committee members pushed back. Collins said the planning board makes its own decisions, and if someone doesn’t agree with those decisions, “they go straight to Superior Court. So, the committee is not involved in it.”
He also noted that the application is not approved yet. “The entire application could be faulty, and that means the application would fail on its merits at the planning board,” he said.
Committee member and former mayor Greg Buontempo, who served on the governing body when the 2013 Bell Works redevelopment agreement was adopted, said the scale and impact of data centers have changed dramatically in the last decade.
“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” Buontempo said, adding that he remains hopeful the township can still work with Somerset.
He also suggested the township “amend that development agreement” with Somerset. “Maybe that’s worth a legal battle of trying to protect the town,” he said.
Impreveduto told Buontempo, “With all due respect, you were mayor for four of the 10 years, and you didn’t seek to reopen anything to prevent a redevelopment, to prevent the data center from opening.” Buontempo accepted that adding data centers to the agreement was a “horrible, horrible addendum to that redevelopment agreement,” he said. “It’s a bad decision. But the current township (committee) may need to do something to try to prevent it, protect the town.”
An online petition launched by resident Kin Gee, who is also president of the grassroots nonprofit CHARGE (Consumers Helping Affect Regulation of Gas & Electric), calls for a townwide ban on data centers. The petition on actionnetwork.org had gathered 259 signatures as of Aug. 18.
Collins said the planning board’s review of Somerset’s application is expected to take several months. New Jersey’s Municipal Land Use Law generally allows up to 120 days for such reviews, subject to extensions.
An informational community meeting about the Bell Works data center is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Aug. 26 at a location to be determined. The planning board will hold its next meeting Sept.1.
The article originally appeared in the August 20 – 26, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
