On July 16, 2026, the Town of Brookhaven’s board voted unanimously to enact an 18-month moratorium on data center development — a local freeze that runs to January 2028 while the town drafts its first data-center zoning code. This local freeze follows New York’s statewide Executive Order 62 pause signed two days earlier, and it immediately puts Wildflower’s planned $1 billion, 176 MW Yaphank campus in limbo.
For anyone scoping low-voltage work on Long Island — structured cabling, fiber optic backbones, DAS, access control, CCTV — the permitting environment has shifted. The main hurdle isn’t just the state’s 50 MW threshold anymore; it’s the local zoning clock in the towns that actually control site-plan approval, and Brookhaven just became the first Long Island town to close that lane.
What Brookhaven Voted On
According to TBR News Media, the July 16 vote was unanimous. Town Supervisor Dan Panico (R) framed the 18-month window as a review period to craft a zoning code the town currently lacks — Brookhaven has no data-center-specific zoning on its books. Panico explicitly contrasted the local freeze with the state’s moratorium, saying Brookhaven needed to “proceed for a longer term, and also not have a moratorium with what I would categorize as [having] so many carve-outs and loopholes” — a direct reference to EO 62’s 50 MW threshold, which exempts smaller facilities.
The vote followed a roughly 70-person rally outside Brookhaven Town Hall calling for a permanent ban, and a six-hour public comment session in which the overwhelming majority of speakers opposed the data center. Environmental justice groups — including the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group and the Brookhaven NAACP — raised concerns about water draw, grid strain, noise, and emissions, drawing parallels to the town’s landfill contaminant plume.
The Wildflower Yaphank Project
Data Center Dynamics reports that developer Wildflower, through its WF Industrial subsidiary, proposed a 549,000 sq ft data center on a 79-acre site near the village of Yaphank, adjacent to the Long Island Expressway’s north service road. The site is currently warehousing.
At full build-out the facility would draw 176 MW — roughly half the output of the nearby Caithness power plant, and, per Town Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich, about 50% of the entire Town of Brookhaven’s electricity use. The project included 78 proposed backup generators. Wildflower’s Director of Development Michael Bowden told the board the project represented $1 billion in private investment, over 1,000 direct union construction jobs across a 2–3 year build, 50 full-time operating jobs, and $40 million in annual property taxes ($28.9 million to the Longwood Central School District).
Town Attorney Annette Eaderesto confirmed the Wildflower application was incomplete at the time of the moratorium’s passage and will not be processed during the 18-month freeze. The project is stalled on both fronts: at 176 MW it exceeds EO 62’s 50 MW state threshold, and locally it now sits behind Brookhaven’s zoning-code rewrite.
Why Local Approvals Now Drive the Timeline
Executive Order 62 explicitly leaves local approvals untouched — its text states it does not apply to “permits, approvals, licenses, or similar forms of permission from local governments.” We covered that distinction in our EO 62 analysis. What Brookhaven’s vote makes concrete is that the EO’s local carve-out is not a green light; it simply returns the decision to municipal governments — and Long Island towns are exercising that authority.
For low-voltage contractors and the GCs, facility managers, and IT directors who hire them, this means the Long Island data center pipeline is no longer governed by a single state clock. It is governed by a patchwork of local zoning processes, and Brookhaven — the town that hosted the most advanced LI data center proposal — has just started an 18-month review with no guarantee of approval at the end.
Where the Near-Term Long Island Work Actually Is
The moratorium shifts demand rather than eliminating it. With greenfield hyperscale frozen through at least January 2028, the work available now falls into three categories:
Enterprise and colocation retrofit. Existing commercial buildings across Nassau and Suffolk — from Hauppauge industrial parks to Melville office corridors — that are upgrading power density, cooling, and connectivity for AI-adjacent workloads. These projects are sub-50 MW, often sub-5 MW, and they need structured cabling, fiber backbone upgrades, DAS for dense rack environments, and access control for hardened server rooms. None of them require a DEC discretionary permit, and most do not trigger data-center-specific zoning because they are renovations within existing building stock.
Edge and enterprise nodes. Smaller, distributed facilities — point-of-presence sites, enterprise edge closets, carrier hotel expansions in places like Bethpage and Ronkonkoma — that serve the latency-sensitive workloads Long Island’s financial, healthcare, and logistics sectors generate. These projects run on existing commercial power and need fiber optic cabling, network infrastructure, and security systems at a campus or building scale rather than a hyperscale one.
Existing building stock upgrades. The warehousing and light-industrial stock along the Route 111 and LIE corridors — the same category Wildflower’s Yaphank site sits in — will continue to see tenant improvements, power upgrades, and security buildouts regardless of data center zoning. Our network’s crews are currently installing structured cabling, access control, CCTV, and Wi-Fi for these properties.
What to Watch on the Zoning Clock
Brookhaven’s 18-month review will produce the town’s first data-center zoning code. The outcome remains uncertain — the public comment record was overwhelmingly opposed, multiple councilmembers expressed skepticism about data centers’ long-term utility, and Councilmember Karen Kesnig explicitly supported a permanent ban. Supervisor Panico said any eventual ban “will be because we have the legal basis and findings to do so,” suggesting the zoning code could range from conditional allowance to prohibition.
For crews scoping Long Island work, the next steps are clear:
- Track Brookhaven’s zoning draft. The code that emerges in late 2027 will define what, if anything, gets built in Yaphank and whether other LI towns follow Brookhaven’s lead. Check the town’s planning department postings, not just state-level news.
- Pivot scope to retrofit and edge. The demand that is not paused — enterprise upgrades, colocation expansion, edge nodes — needs the same Division 27/28 trades. Cabling, fiber, DAS, access control, and CCTV scopes on these jobs are live now.
- Watch neighboring towns. Brookhaven was first. Other Suffolk and Nassau towns facing similar proposals may adopt parallel moratoria or zoning codes, further fragmenting the LI data-center map.
Connecting to the Right Crews
LowVoltage-NewYork connects Long Island facility managers, IT directors, and general contractors with licensed low-voltage contractor crews across the New York market. Whether your project is a data center cabling retrofit on existing building stock, an edge node buildout, or an enterprise network upgrade, we can scope the structured cabling, fiber optic, DAS, access control, CCTV, AV, and Wi-Fi work and match the job with qualified crews in our network.
Crews in our network hold BICSI certifications and carry New York low-voltage licensing appropriate to the jurisdiction. Need cabling, fiber, DAS, or security scopes quoted on a Long Island project? Get a free estimate and we will line up the right licensed partner crew for your schedule.
For more on where New York’s data center pipeline stands — Micron, NYDIG, the Western NY campuses, and now the Long Island zoning clock — see our NY data center pipeline tracker, our data center cabling services and structured cabling pages, and our Long Island location hub, including the Yaphank crew coverage page.