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In a unanimous vote, the board denied developer Servistar Realties’s request for a special permit extension, effectively killing the project.
A planned hyperscale data center in Westfield has been struck down after the city’s planning board voted Tuesday not to extend the developer’s special permit, which is set to expire at the end of October.
The Westfield Planning Board’s unanimous vote came at the end of a special meeting that ran about two hours. Members pressed Paul Corey, who represented developer Servistar Realties, on why the company had made so little headway on a $3 billion development spanning more than 150 acres that it has been pursuing in the city since 2019. The board also found that Servistar had not shown good cause for an extension.
“You put the cart before the horse by coming for the special permit before you had a lot of your ducks in a row,” Planning Board member Jane Magarian said at the meeting.
The board granted the original permits in October 2021. Since then, according to the discussion at the meeting, Servistar has opened talks with Westfield Gas & Electric about power supply and hired surveyors to map wetlands on the site. But the company never bought the property. Board Chair William Carellas said that omission was central to his decision.
“We provided you all the tools to make this shovel-ready … Last time I knew you guys haven’t bought land yet. And I mean, clearly we gave you what you needed,” Carellas said during the meeting.
Corey blamed outside forces for the delays. He said the company needed state tax incentives in place before it could line up financing, and that it had lobbied lawmakers and hired a government relations firm to push for them. The state codified sales tax breaks for data centers in 2024, but Gov. Maura Healey paused applications for them this summer. Corey also said federal tariffs imposed after President Donald Trump’s election disrupted chip supplies and energy costs.
“It wasn’t because of us, it was because of the market,” Corey told the board.
Board members were unmoved. Carellas said that, tariffs aside, a building should already have gone up. Vice Chair Cheryl Crowe said it appeared the project had not been carefully vetted before it came to the board. Other members faulted Servistar for failing to keep the board informed as problems arose.
Corey could not be reached for comment. Erik J. Bartone, a principal of the company, did not respond to Boston.com’s request for comment.
Members also cited procedural lapses. Servistar let its limited liability company status expire in late 2024, and it never recorded its special permit with the Hampden County Registry of Deeds.
Board member John Bowen said that small oversights are often behind the failure of large developments.
“Somebody didn’t do an inspection, somebody didn’t pull a permit, somebody didn’t do what they were supposed to,” Bowen said during the meeting.
Some residents watching the virtual meeting, who were allowed to unmute themselves, voiced their criticism at the board after the vote.
Servistar has 20 days to appeal the board’s decision under state law.
The decision effectively ends large-scale data center development in Westfield for now. The City Council approved a one-year moratorium on such facilities in July, part of a wave of Massachusetts communities slowing data center plans. Servistar’s project was exempt from the pause because it was already underway.
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