Nassau County froze data centers for 12 months — before anyone applied

At its April 13, 2026 meeting, the Nassau County Board of County Commissioners directed County Attorney Denise May to draft an ordinance placing a 12-month moratorium on new data center development within unincorporated Nassau County. Commission Chair Alyson McCullough (R-District 4) has been the public face of the push. In an April 14 news release, the county stated that there are no active or pending applications for data center development in unincorporated Nassau County and framed the moratorium as a proactive measure to give staff time to develop appropriate standards before any developer files under the existing zoning code.

The current zoning code has no standards specific to hyperscale data centers. Under existing rules, a developer could potentially file and proceed under the general industrial designations. The moratorium pauses acceptance and processing of new data center applications for twelve months — time the county is using to draft a land-development-code update with data-center-specific standards around water, power, air, noise, setbacks, and disclosure.

The process ran three steps: initial discussion of the draft ordinance on April 27, 2026, a first public hearing on May 11, 2026, and a second public hearing plus the final vote on June 8, 2026, all at 96135 Nassau Place in Yulee. Commissioners adopted Ordinance No. 2026-044 unanimously at the June 8 hearing.

Nassau is not the first U.S. jurisdiction to try this — at least six states, from New York to Georgia, have proposed moratoriums on new data center construction as a way to buy time for regulation. Florida has passed statewide data center legislation that took effect July 1, 2026, but that law primarily addresses utility tariffs and confidentiality. Local siting, water, and land-use decisions remain the county's responsibility.

In a September 22, 2025 news release, Miami-based NextNRG (NASDAQ: NXXT) announced it had secured a long-term lease option on 1,600 acres in Nassau County from timber and real estate company Rayonier. The release described plans for a 200-megawatt smart microgrid on roughly 1,200 acres, with the remaining 400 acres described as "ideal" for hyperscale data center development. The release also cited potential access to an additional 6,000 acres for future expansion and positioned the site near Jacksonville International Airport as attractive for AI and cloud infrastructure growth.

Six months later, Nassau County officials said they had no information about the project — no rezoning request, no site plan, no contact from the company despite attempts to reach out. On April 6, 2026, the county issued a statement to that effect. NextNRG did not respond to reporter inquiries in early April.

Following commissioner action on the moratorium, NextNRG founder and CEO Michael D. Farkas — who also founded electric-vehicle charging company Blink Charging — gave an interview to First Coast News clarifying the company's position. Farkas said the original intent was a solar-energy project: solar panels, battery storage, and sales to local utility JEA. He acknowledged the company had considered a data center when the solar project ran into difficulties but said a data center is not the direction NextNRG intends to pursue. JEA confirmed NextNRG has reached out but said no agreements have been made.

The credibility question for residents and commissioners is which framing reflects the company's actual intent. The original release was public, specific, and described the site in explicitly data-center terms. The walk-back came after a moratorium was already on the table. No application of any kind — for a data center, a solar farm, or anything else — had been filed with Nassau County as of the June 8, 2026 moratorium adoption — which is precisely why the county could freeze the ground without disrupting anyone already in the queue.