Westfield Planning Board Rejects Permit Extension for Data Center

The Westfield planning board voted unanimously on October 13 to deny an extension of the special permit for a proposed hyperscale data center campus, effectively ending the project, WBUR reported in a story originally published by New England Public Media.

The permit for the more than 150-acre campus expires at the end of October 2026. Servistar Realties had pursued the project since 2019 and won initial approvals in 2021, but board members said the developer had shown little progress since then and had never purchased the land it planned to build on.

"We provided you all the tools to make this shovel-ready," planning board chair William Carellas said during the two-hour special meeting.

Paul Corey, representing Servistar, attributed the delays to the wait for state sales tax breaks for data centers, which were written into Massachusetts law in 2024 but whose applications Gov. Maura Healey froze in the summer of 2026. He also cited federal tariffs affecting chips, supply chains and natural gas costs.

Board members also noted that Servistar let its LLC status lapse in late 2024 and never recorded its original special permit with the Hampden County Registry of Deeds. Servistar has 20 days to appeal under state law.

Westfield's city council enacted a one-year moratorium on data centers in July 2026, from which the Servistar project had been exempt.

This story was first reported by WBUR.