The Data Center Map Just Got Redrawn

Real Estate Insights. Success Mindset. One Step at a Time.

Issue #60 | July 19, 2026

New York just became the first state in the country to freeze new data centers. A dozen other states have similar bills sitting in committee. And at least three states are moving in the exact opposite direction. The map isn't shrinking. It's sorting.

🧠 Market Insights

The Data Center Map Just Got Redrawn

On July 14, Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order making New York the first state in the nation to impose a statewide moratorium on data centers. Any project pulling 50 megawatts or more is frozen for at least a year while regulators build a framework for grid impact, water use, and ratepayer protection.

A whole state. Not a county. Not a planning commission. A state.

New York isn't operating alone. Good Jobs First is tracking data center moratorium bills filed in at least twelve state legislatures this cycle, including Georgia, Maryland, Vermont, Virginia, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Some target only hyperscale facilities. Others freeze everything until a utility commission finishes its homework.

Here's the twist. The same week New York hit the brakes, three other states pressed different pedals entirely.

New Jersey enacted its Data Center Fair Share Act, requiring facilities of 50 megawatts or more to commit to covering at least 85% of their projected power costs for a decade. Virginia closed out a months-long budget standoff by keeping its sales tax exemption intact, but added a new energy consumption tax on data centers, capped at $600 million a year. Arizona and Illinois both paused their tax incentive programs.

Then New Hampshire went the other direction and made it easier for data centers to bring their own power and skip the interconnection queue altogether.

And in Georgia, where we've watched county after county wrestle with this fight, the state-level moratorium push failed again, same as it did in South Carolina. The action just moved local: county commissions are still saying no one deal at a time, even while the statehouse says nothing at all.

None of this is happening because states suddenly hate technology. It's happening because power, not land, has become the real constraint. CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield both flag utility interconnection timelines of two to four years as the new normal in core markets. When a single 200-megawatt facility can reshape a region's electric bill, legislators feel the heat before the developer breaks ground.

Dirt Dawg Take: This isn't a slowdown. It's a sort. Every bill, tax, and carve-out is a state deciding, in public, whether it wants to be a host market or a pass-through market. The demand for data center land hasn't shrunk one acre. It's just relocating, in real time, to whichever jurisdictions can prove they can deliver power without political blowback.

✨ The Alpha Effect

Don't Bet On The State. Bet On Your Optionality.

Watch what the crowd does when a headline like New York's hits. They pick a side. Is this good for data centers or bad for data centers? Is this state smart or short-sighted?

Wrong question.

The pros aren't trying to predict which of twelve states blinks first. They're building positions that don't depend on any single legislature staying in a good mood.

That's second-order thinking. First-order thinking asks, “Will my state pass a moratorium?” Second order thinking asks, “if it does, what's my next move already lined up?”

Look at what New Hampshire just did while New York was hitting pause. Somewhere in that contrast is the whole lesson: policy risk isn't a reason to freeze. It's a reason to diversify where your power comes from, and where your dirt sits.

The landowners getting hurt right now aren't the ones in restrictive states. They're the ones who only had one plan.

That's not bad luck. That's a preparation gap.

Complexity like this used to scare off capital. Now it's a filter. It clears out the operators who need certainty to move and hands the field to the ones who know how to build optionality into every deal: alternate power sources, alternate jurisdictions, alternate exit timelines.

Positioning beats prediction. Every single time.

🚀 One Step at a Time

Action Steps This Week

1. Map Your Behind-the-Meter Rules, Not Just Your Moratorium Risk

Pull up every parcel you own or have under contract for data center or industrial use. Cross-check the state against the Good Jobs First moratorium tracker, then run the same check against the Dirt Dawg Data Center Heatmap for a market-level read (link in the comments). Behind-the-meter doesn't mean unregulated. If your plan assumes an on-site natural gas generator, check whether your state's clean energy rules restrict it anyway. Illinois is already tightening rules on new gas generation. Other states are doing the same in different ways. Every jurisdiction writes this differently, so know what your state actually allows before you build a pro forma around a power solution that might not survive permitting.

2. Start Researching Your Alternative Power Options

Small modular reactors are moving from theory to real site selection conversations. So are fuel cells and paired battery storage. Find out what's actually viable for your specific parcel and your specific market. You don't need to become a nuclear engineer. You need to know enough to ask sharp questions when a developer or buyer brings SMRs to the table, because that conversation is coming faster than most people think.

3. Call One Broker In A “Winning” State

Pick a jurisdiction that's staying open- think Texas, New Hampshire, or parts of the Southeast- and ask what land is trading at right now. If your local market just froze, that's useful intelligence, not just an interesting data point.

Small steps compound. While a dozen statehouses argue about the rules, the demand for powered land isn't waiting around for any of them to decide.

Here's to building your success, one step at a time...

from the dirt up.

Kris "Dirt Dawg" McGee 🐾