H5 Data Center, Lockport, New York

H5 Data Centers owns the former Yahoo data center campus in the Town of Lockport's industrial park in Niagara County, New York, which it bought for a reported $49 million in a sale-leaseback deal that closed on Dec. 30, 2024. Yahoo is still operating on the site under a five-year lease. The Town of Lockport, meanwhile, is working on an 18-month moratorium on any new data centers.

The campus sits at Upper Mountain and Junction roads. Yahoo first built it in 2009 on 30 acres for $150 million, and expansions in 2014 and 2019 grew it to 10 buildings on 43 acres totaling 409,200 square feet. The buildings use the passively air-cooled "chicken-coop" design, and H5 lists two on-site substations offering up to 44 megawatts. Of Yahoo's employees, 15 moved to H5 and 140 remained with Yahoo on the site. "This entity, H5 Data Centers, purchased all of Yahoo's land and buildings, i.e. real estate. It didn't do anything with the operations of Yahoo! itself", said Tom Sy, the town's economic development coordinator.

Yahoo's two tax agreements with the Lockport Industrial Development Agency, which had spared it town, county and Starpoint Central School District taxes for years before phasing in payments, were ended with the sale, and H5 receives no tax incentives for now. H5 could still ask the IDA for incentives for future expansions, and Sy said the 2019 building is nowhere near full: "There is room in the 2019 data center for H5 to go out and identify other companies that need data center storage".

In 2026 the Niagara County Planning Board backed data center moratoriums sought by the towns of Lockport and Cambria, 18 months in Lockport and nine in Cambria, and neither town had received any new data center requests. Other data centers in Niagara County include the Digipower X facility in North Tonawanda, the Lake Mariner complex in Somerset and Blockfusion in Niagara Falls, and the Town of Lewiston enacted its own 18-month moratorium earlier in 2026.

The Lockport Town Board scheduled a public hearing for Aug. 5, 2026 on a local law establishing an 18-month moratorium on data center permitting and approval in the town. New York State's year-long moratorium on approving large new data centers applies only to state permitting, so data centers could still go through local review.