Ranalli Super DC, LLC Data Center, Lysander, New York

Ranalli Super DC, LLC, a company controlled by Syracuse developer James Ranalli, has asked the state grid operator to connect a 300 megawatt data center on vacant industrial land near Route 48 and Hencle Boulevard in Lysander, Onondaga County, New York. The Town of Lysander answered with a six-month moratorium on data storage facilities, passed May 7, 2026, that runs until November 7, 2026.

The 124-acre site at Hencle Boulevard and Oswego Road is listed for sale at $60 million, and Ranalli plans to sell it to a data center developer he says he cannot name because of a non-disclosure agreement. Ranalli, who would not build the data center himself, put its possible cost at $4 billion to $8 billion and said it would be good for the town because of the property taxes it would pay.

"We don't understand data centers. It's not what we do," Ranalli said, calling for a town meeting with a representative of the developer. The sale listing describes the land as a "300 MW Data Center Site" next to 345-kilovolt transmission lines, with a National Grid gas regulator station beside the property. Ranalli Super DC applied to the New York Independent System Operator in May 2025, and the project is projected to connect to the grid in 2028.

It is the second plan for the same land: in 2021 the company proposed a 1-million-square-foot auto parts warehouse, distribution and retail center there. After community opposition and a lawsuit, a smaller version was approved with tax breaks, and the company canceled it in 2023.

Residents organized as Citizens Against Lysander Data Center and gathered more than 1,800 signatures on a petition for a moratorium, pointing to the site's closeness to the Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area, noise from cooling systems and backup diesel generators, energy costs, property values and water. "Water pollution, limited natural resources, and the impact during droughts are concerns, especially for many of the Lysander residents on wells and not village water," the petition states.

More than 350 residents attended the May 7 meeting where the moratorium passed unanimously. "So we as a community could have issues and we wouldn't have anywhere to go to," said Johanna Bock of Citizens for Lysander, who worries about who would answer for problems if the facility changed hands.

No application for the data center is before the town. "A data center would be an allowed use under our current zoning regulations on an industrial parcel," Supervisor Kevin Rode said in April, adding that any application would go to the planning board, not the town board. Rode said the town chose six months because an entity is seeking utility and grid operator approvals for the project, and that the moratorium law lets applicants seek a hardship exception from the Town Board.

The town has set up a data center advisory committee to review its code, and Onondaga County has funded a $500,000 study of data centers.

New York's one-year statewide moratorium on permits for big data centers does not stop local review. "That does not preclude local governments from moving forward in their local permitting process," said State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez. The Lysander Town Board has said that because no application was before the town before the governor's executive order, it believes the state pause holds in Lysander, and that it knows of no state environmental permit request for a data center on the parcel.

The town moratorium expires November 7, 2026; after that, any application would go to the Lysander Planning Board, which Rode has said would treat it as an entirely new application and a lengthy process.