10/10/2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2026
CONTACT: Chris Russell
[email protected]
Joe Rand's Top Village Official Championed Orangetown’s Data Center Boom And Their Sweetheart Tax Deals
Rand talks tough on data centers, but the man running his village hall fought to bring them here, gave them sweetheart tax deals, and called it “my proudest moment as Town Supervisor”
Rockland County - October 10, 2026… State Senator Bill Weber (R-38) released the following statement today in response to Nyack Mayor Joe Rand's joint canvass this morning with Cait Conley on the "effects of unregulated Data Centers in Orangetown." Rand's own village administrator, Andy Stewart, led the charge to bring data center development to Orangetown as town supervisor from 2012 to 2017.
"How does Joe Rand square his alleged opposition to data centers in Rockland with the fact that his top aide in Nyack, Andy Stewart, was the chief proponent and driving force behind data center development, giving out sweetheart property tax deals, while he served as Orangetown's Supervisor? In fact, it was Andy Stewart who sold 60 acres of the former Rockland Psychiatric Center to JPMorgan Chase for a data center and rezoned the land to make it happen. He said at the time that this was one of the things he was proudest of as supervisor. Joe, let us know how your conversation goes with voters when you tell them that your village administrator was responsible for what you are supposedly outraged and protesting about today," said Senator Weber.
Stewart celebrated his work bringing data centers to Orangetown. At the June 2013 topping-off of Bloomberg's 130,000-square-foot data center in Orangeburg, he called the project "the beginning of what we predict will be a boom in high-tech business for the town." On May 14, 2013, the board approved a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal that cut the data center’s local and school taxes to $250,000 in its first year, phasing up to $581,000 by 2025.
In 2017, Stewart’s Town Board rezoned 61 acres of the former Rockland Psychiatric Center campus from residential to a new office-park district and agreed to sell the land to JPMorgan Chase for $7.5 million. That October, Stewart told the Nyack Free Press that landing the Chase data center was “my proudest moment as Town Supervisor”. Three of the four data centers operating in Rockland today opened or won approval while he ran Orangetown.
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