Hillsboro Becomes First Oregon City to Halt New Data Centers

July 29, 2026

A 120-day moratorium, filed with just 24 hours’ public notice, freezes new data center and battery storage applications while the city rewrites its rulebook.

Hillsboro’s City Council voted unanimously at a special meeting on Monday, July 27, to enact a 120-day moratorium on new and expanded data center and battery energy storage system (BESS) development — making it the first city in Oregon to formally halt the industry through the state’s land-use moratorium process.

The resolution, adopted as Resolution No. 2932, blocks the city from accepting, processing, or approving new land-use applications for data centers or BESS facilities proposed as a primary use for the duration of the pause. It also tightens the rules on accessory use, capping it at less than 20% of a site’s total structure square footage, less than 20% of original construction value, or less than 20% (or 20 megawatts) of contracted or available electrical service capacity.

City council president Rob Harris said the timing of the vote was deliberate: Hillsboro was required to give state land-use authorities 45 days’ notice before filing, and city leaders tried to keep that notice quiet specifically to avoid triggering a rush of last-minute applications from developers trying to beat the deadline. “We did not want a bunch of new data center applications to be filed,” Harris said. The public got even less warning — the meeting was announced with roughly 24 hours’ notice, and Hillsboro Herald reported the council session followed months of pressure from residents, including a petition nearing 5,000 signatures.

Hillsboro currently hosts 35 data centers — more than any other city in Oregon — and residents who testified at Monday’s meeting, several angrily, cited rising utility costs and unresolved questions about the industry’s environmental and infrastructure impact. Portland-area commercial developers pushed back on the process itself: Steve Sieber, a principal with Trammell Crow, told the council he’d only learned of the resolution the night before the vote.

Projects that had already submitted land-use applications before the resolution passed are grandfathered in and can continue moving forward, and the moratorium doesn’t touch facilities already approved or built, or data storage and BESS systems built as accessory uses to something like a hospital or manufacturing site. The pause is separate from — and narrower than — the State of Oregon’s own temporary moratorium on Enterprise Zone tax agreements for data centers, which addresses incentives rather than land use.

During the 120 days, city staff will research the economic and environmental impacts of data centers and battery storage and draft potential updates to Hillsboro’s Community Development Code. The council can extend the moratorium up to six additional months once the initial period expires, meaning the freeze could run into 2027 before permanent rules are in place.

For contractors and developers with data center or BESS work in the Hillsboro pipeline, the message is clear: get applications in before a moratorium lands elsewhere, because Hillsboro likely won’t be the last Oregon city to take this step. Hood River’s council passed a similar pause in April, though its own city attorney warned that without following the state process, that vote might carry only advisory weight — a distinction that makes Hillsboro’s moratorium the first with real legal teeth.

Sources: KPTV, City of Hillsboro, Government Technology, OPB, The Registry Pacific Northwest Real Estate, Hillsboro Herald