Former Remington Gun Factory Data Center, Ilion, New York

The Village of Ilion scheduled a public hearing for September 28, 2026 on a proposed moratorium on large-load electric development, the latest turn in the fight over whether the former Remington Arms gun factory in Herkimer County, New York, becomes a data center. The site's owner, Turin Hoefler Avenue LLC of Turin Management, has filed state brownfield cleanup applications describing a data center, but says "no data center end user is involved or committed to this site."

The plant at 14 Hoefler Avenue covers about 32 acres and 1.1 million square feet, and it closed in March 2024 after more than two centuries of gun making; Turin bought it the following year. State filings describe a 250,000-square-foot data center on Site C, a second phase of the same size on Site E, and a substation on Site D, totaling 200 megawatts of power with $2 billion to $3 billion invested. Investigators found arsenic, lead and copper in the Site C soil above state cleanup standards for commercial use.

A large crowd came to the Village Board of Trustees meeting on April 27, 2026, after the filings were reported. Resident Carrie Burling asked about cooling chemicals, pointing to a high concentration of cancer in the area, and a Change.org petition asking officials to pause approval and study the plan had more than 1,000 signatures by late April. "It's marketed as an economic opportunity, but after construction it will provide minimal jobs," wrote signer Peter from New Hartford, who had moved from northern Virginia.

Mayor John Stephens has played the plan down, saying there is "not an interested party at this early stage," and that any future power for the site would be kept separate from the village's electric system. The Herkimer County Industrial Development Agency said Turin explored a data center and entered the state grid operator's power queue, but has since pivoted to back a multi-tenant office and light industrial park instead.

Turin itself is still weighing a data center: an Empire State Development study "found a data center to be the strongest option for the site," and it had tried and failed to attract a manufacturer, chief executive Kristen O'Neill told residents. O'Neill wrote that Turin is "a small, women owned business" that has invested millions of dollars without a profit and cannot fund the cleanup alone, and argued the moratorium "sends investors and manufacturers a clear message to stay away from Ilion."

The Village Board of Trustees scheduled a public hearing on the moratorium for 5 p.m. on September 28 at the Municipal Building on Morgan Street; no result has been published yet. Separately, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is reviewing the brownfield applications, with review and comment periods scheduled through 2026 and 2027.