Vineland Residents Rally Against AI Data Center, Demand LNG Review Halt

More than 100 residents packed into Giampietro Memorial Park on the northwest side of Vineland Saturday, demanding that city officials pump the brakes on a massive AI data-center campus that critics say rushed through approval and into construction without meaningful public input.

The March 21 rally targeted DataOne, the developer behind what has been characterized as one of the East Coast's largest AI data centers. Protesters called for greater transparency from city officials and developers and stricter review of the project's on-site energy plans. The timing was pointed: phase two of the DataOne campus was set to go before the Vineland Planning Board just days later, on Thursday.

That second phase would significantly deepen the project's footprint, adding more data center space, a power generation facility, and water infrastructure to a site that the planning board first approved in June 2024. Critics say the project quickly moved into construction after that approval with little community input, a process that left many Vineland residents feeling blindsided by the scale of what was rising in their neighborhood.

Bayly Winder, a Democratic candidate for Congress, spoke at the rally and framed the community's core demand as one of basic accountability: residents want more transparency from city officials and developers about what is being built and how it will operate.

DataOne has pushed back on some of the concerns. Company officials have said that noise tied to the site is temporary and connected to active construction, and that the site is complying with local regulations. At a January town hall, DataOne CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney defended the project's environmental footprint more broadly, telling attendees that the company will cover most of its energy costs and that emissions from the facility would be "lower than a medium-size farm."

That comparison has done little to quiet opposition. Vineland's identity as a Cumberland County agricultural community makes the farm analogy a loaded one, and residents at Saturday's rally showed no sign of standing down before Thursday's planning board hearing on phase two.