Two Oregon Cities, Two Very Different Responses to the Data Center Boom

July 29, 2026

Hillsboro slammed the brakes. Salem, one week later, chose a task force instead — and the project at the center of it all can still move forward.

If you want to see the range of options Oregon cities are reaching for as data center proposals land in their backyards, you don’t have to look any further than the 45 miles between Hillsboro and Salem. Within the same week, both cities held high-tension council meetings over data center development — and arrived at nearly opposite outcomes.

Hillsboro: an actual moratorium

On July 27, Hillsboro’s City Council voted unanimously to enact a 120-day moratorium blocking new data center and battery energy storage system (BESS) applications outright, becoming the first city in Oregon to use the state’s formal land-use moratorium process to do it. The vote followed weeks of public pressure, and city leaders deliberately kept the required 45-day advance notice to state land-use authorities quiet, specifically to avoid a rush of last-minute applications filed to beat the deadline. Hillsboro already hosts 35 data centers — more than any other city in the state — and the pause gives the city four months (with a possible six-month extension) to study impacts and rewrite its development code before any new primary-use applications can even be submitted.

Salem: a task force, not a pause

Salem’s council met the very same night, July 27, for its own data center showdown — and landed somewhere very different. In an 8-0 vote, council agreed to explore banning future non-disclosure agreements with data center companies and to form a task force of up to nine members to study data center policy, hold at least three town halls, review how other jurisdictions have handled it, and report back with recommendations by December 31, 2026. What council did not do is approve a moratorium or any administrative pause. Verrus, the company behind the proposed project, remains free to submit a formal development application right now, while the task force does its work in parallel.

The project driving Salem’s debate is “Oakline at Mill Creek” — a proposed three-building data center campus plus a utility substation on roughly 75 acres near Turner Road SE and Deer Park Drive SE, with Verrus projecting more than $5 billion in investment and about 75 permanent jobs. Part of what fueled Monday’s packed, emotional meeting wasn’t just the project itself but how it became public. Salem had been under a confidentiality agreement with Verrus since March 2025, and wasn’t released from it until July 8; City Manager Krishna Namburi didn’t disclose the proposal publicly until the July 13 council meeting. During the confidential period, city staff had already participated in an introductory meeting, a development-process consultation, three technical meetings, and a discussion about preserving Oregon white oak trees on the site — all before residents knew the project existed. Public testimony ran long enough Monday night that the city cut off comment at 9:30 p.m. to get through the rest of its agenda, with residents saying the secrecy itself had damaged trust in the process, separate from what they thought of the project.

The substance of the concerns overlapped heavily with Hillsboro’s: electricity demand, water use, wastewater capacity, noise, backup generators, traffic, emergency response, and effects on local wildlife, along with pointed questions about whether roughly 75 permanent jobs justifies the footprint and utility demand of a 75-acre campus — plus the three-year property tax exemption attached to the deal.

Why the two cities landed differently

The practical distinction for our readers is this: in Hillsboro, no new data center or BESS land-use application can be filed or processed for the next four months, full stop. In Salem, nothing is currently blocking Verrus — or any other company — from filing a complete application for Oakline at Mill Creek while the city’s task force spends the next five months studying the question. Salem’s approach keeps the door open for negotiation and investment to continue moving in parallel with policy development; Hillsboro’s closes the door until the policy work is finished.

It’s also worth noting the broader landscape both cities are reacting to. Oregon’s data center industry is not a small player in the state’s economy — it contributed $10.8 billion to Oregon’s GDP in 2024, generated over $1 billion in state and local tax revenue, and supported more than 60,000 jobs and nearly $6 billion in labor income statewide, according to industry-track reporting. The Data Center Coalition, the industry’s trade group, has publicly argued that moratoriums like Hillsboro’s send the wrong signal to companies weighing where to invest. That tension — between the tax base and job numbers data centers bring, and the water, power, and land-use costs neighbors are increasingly organized against — is exactly what’s playing out differently in these two Willamette Valley cities within days of each other.

For contractors and developers watching the region’s data center pipeline, the Hillsboro–Salem contrast is worth tracking closely over the next several months: Hillsboro’s moratorium expires (or gets extended) in late November, and Salem’s task force reports back by year-end. Both timelines could reshape how — and where — the next wave of Oregon data center construction gets built.

Sources: Salem Business Journal, Salem Reporter, NBC16, KPTV, City of Hillsboro