New Orleans

Researched: 2026-08-02 · Lead source: Brockovich AI Data Center community map (1 resident report, 2026-05-05) · ZIP demographics: 68.7% Black, pop 35,318 (Census ACS 2023) · County: Orleans Parish (roughly 58% Black — verify at census.gov/quickfacts/orleansparishlouisiana) Status: None found in-ZIP — and citywide, New Orleans has a data-center moratorium in effect. Resident-reported pin, no confirmed facility in 70122 as of 2026-08-02.

This report is research, not legal, financial, real-estate, or investment advice.

0. Snapshot

ZIP 70122 is Gentilly — a large, 68.7% Black residential ZIP in the northeast of Orleans Parish, running from Gentilly Boulevard and Dillard University up toward the lakefront. Unlike the Shreveport/Caddo ZIPs in this project, Gentilly is not near any hyperscale data-center site, and New Orleans as a whole has paused data-center development citywide.

• In-ZIP facility: None found as of 2026-08-02. No approved, proposed, or announced data center has a confirmed address in 70122 / Gentilly. This is a resident-reported pin with no corroborating public source of a specific Gentilly project — a legitimate finding: it most likely reflects citywide concern rather than a named local site.
• Citywide moratorium: on 2026-01-28 the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to ban new data-center construction for up to a year (an "interim zoning district" that council members said could extend up to two years and may become permanent). The ban took effect immediately. (Verite News; WWNO, accessed 2026-08-02)
• What triggered it: the moratorium effectively killed a proposal by MS Solar Grid Data for a data center on a ~17-acre vacant lot near Interstate 10 and Read Boulevard — in New Orleans East, not Gentilly. (NOLA.com, accessed 2026-08-02)
• The rules being drafted: the City Planning Commission is writing zoning that would only allow data centers under 100,000 sq ft, at least 500 feet from homes, and drawing no more than 20 MW, with mandatory Sewerage & Water Board and Entergy review — rules designed to keep hyperscale campuses out of neighborhoods like Gentilly. (NOLA.com, accessed 2026-08-02)

1. The Facility & Where It Sits

• Inside 70122 / Gentilly: no data-center site found. The only concrete New Orleans proposal on record — the MS Solar Grid Data project — was in New Orleans East (I-10 & Read Blvd), a different part of the city, and it was blocked by the moratorium. (NOLA.com, accessed 2026-08-02)
• Existing New Orleans data centers (older colocation/telecom, not hyperscale AI campuses) are elsewhere in the city; none in Gentilly is documented as the subject of the resident report. (DatacenterMap — New Orleans, accessed 2026-08-02)
• Statewide context, not Gentilly: Louisiana's marquee AI project is Meta's "Hyperion" campus in Richland Parish (northeast Louisiana, under construction) and the $12B Amazon/STACK campuses in Caddo/Bossier (Shreveport area) — both hundreds of miles from New Orleans. Do not confuse those with anything in Gentilly. (LouisianAI — Louisiana data centers, accessed 2026-08-02)

The border — where it sits relative to people

• Gentilly is 68.7% Black and one of the most storied Black middle-class and working-class communities in New Orleans (home to Dillard University, Pontchartrain Park — one of the first U.S. suburbs built for Black homeowners — and Gentilly Terrace). It flooded catastrophically in Hurricane Katrina and has fought a long recovery.
• The relevant fact for Gentilly is protective, for now: the citywide moratorium and the proposed 500-foot-from-homes / 20-MW / 100,000-sq-ft caps are specifically aimed at preventing a hyperscale campus from landing next to a residential neighborhood like this one.

2. Public Hearings & Notices

Upcoming: the CPC's recommended data-center zoning rules will go to public hearing before returning to the City Council for a vote. This is the meeting Gentilly residents should watch — it will decide whether, where, and how large any data center can ever be built in New Orleans. Track it via the CPC and the Council's Utility, Cable, Telecommunications & Technology Committee.

3. Power

• New Orleans regulates its own utility. Unusually, the New Orleans City Council — not the Louisiana Public Service Commission — is the regulator of Entergy New Orleans. (The LPSC regulates Entergy Louisiana, which serves the rest of the state.) That means Gentilly residents' power regulator is their own City Council. (The Lens, accessed 2026-08-02)
• Why the council balked at data centers: reporting noted that serving large data-center load could require Entergy to build multiple new gas-fired power plants plus large cooling-water volumes — a cost and reliability concern for a grid that already suffers outages. The council has separately reopened an inquiry into Entergy outage reliability. (NOLA.com — NOE outage inquiry; NOLA.com — NOE data center, accessed 2026-08-02)
• The proposed 20 MW cap per data center is explicitly designed to keep new load small relative to a hyperscale campus (which can run hundreds of MW).

4. Water & Drought

• Gentilly is served by the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board (S&WB) — an agency with its own long-documented reliability struggles (aging pumps, drainage, boil advisories). The proposed data-center rules would require S&WB sign-off that adequate water exists before any data center is approved — a direct acknowledgment that the city's water system could not easily absorb a large new cooling load. (NOLA.com, accessed 2026-08-02)
• Drought: Orleans Parish and southeast Louisiana have seen periods of abnormally dry (D0) conditions in 2026. Check the live county map. (Drought.gov / U.S. Drought Monitor — Louisiana, accessed 2026-08-02)
• No data-center water withdrawal is proposed in or near Gentilly as of 2026-08-02.

5. Population & Who Lives Here

• ZIP 70122: 68.7% Black; population 35,318 (Census ACS 2023). Gentilly — including Gentilly Terrace, Gentilly Woods, Pontchartrain Park, Dillard University, and Milneburg.
• Orleans Parish overall roughly 58% Black. Gentilly is a historically significant Black homeownership community, hit hard by Katrina flooding and still managing recovery, drainage, and insurance pressures.
• ZIP-specific poverty/health figures were Not found in a single reachable source as of 2026-08-02 — see census.gov/quickfacts and The Data Center (datacenterresearch.org), the New Orleans civic-data nonprofit, for neighborhood profiles.

6. Money — Abatements, Incentives, Jobs

• No data-center incentive deal exists for Gentilly because no project exists. Statewide, Louisiana offers a data-center sales-tax exemption and the High Impact Jobs Program, and local ITEP property-tax exemptions — but none apply here absent a project. (LED — data center page, accessed 2026-08-02)
• If the CPC rules eventually allow a small (<100,000 sq ft, ≤20 MW) data center somewhere in New Orleans, any tax deal would go through the City Council and the state. There is nothing to request for Gentilly today.

7. Community Reaction & News Coverage

• The story here is a win for neighborhood protection: citywide concern — over power reliability, water, and quality of life — pushed the City Council to pause all data centers before one could be sited near homes. Council members indicated the ban may become permanent for anything hyperscale. (Verite News; WWNO, accessed 2026-08-02)
• Local newsrooms covering it: Verite News, WWNO/New Orleans Public Radio, The Lens, NOLA.com / The Times-Picayune, and Gambit.
• The single Gentilly pin is best read as civic awareness — a resident tracking the citywide fight — not evidence of a specific local facility.

8. Find Out For Yourself

City — the regulator of both zoning AND your electricity

New Orleans City Council — City Hall, 1300 Perdido St, New Orleans, LA 70112. The Council both writes the zoning and regulates Entergy New Orleans.

• Your district member (District D, which includes Gentilly): Eugene J. Green, Jr. — City Hall, Room 2W20 · (504) 658-1040 · Eugene.Green@nola.gov. (New Orleans City Council — Eugene J. Green, accessed 2026-08-02)
• At-Large members (who led the data-center moratorium) — contact via council.nola.gov. Ask about Motion M-26-62 and the data-center zoning study.
• Utility, Cable, Telecommunications & Technology Committee — the committee that handles Entergy New Orleans matters. (council.nola.gov committees, accessed 2026-08-02)

Planning & Zoning — where the rules are being written

New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC) — City Hall, 1300 Perdido St, 7th Floor (One Stop) · (504) 658-7033 · nola.gov/next/city-planning/contact/. Ask for the status of the data-center zoning study and the public-hearing date.

Utility

Entergy New Orleans — regulated by the City Council (file utility comments through the Council's Utility Committee, not the LPSC). Ask what new generation any data-center load would require.

Water

New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board — ask whether the city's system could serve any future data-center cooling load and how Gentilly's drainage is affected.

Six questions worth asking

1. To Council member Eugene Green (District D): Will the permanent data-center zoning keep hyperscale facilities out of Gentilly and other residential neighborhoods?
2. To the At-Large members / CPC: When is the public hearing on the data-center zoning amendments, and how do Gentilly residents comment?
3. To the CPC: Will the final rules keep the 100,000-sq-ft / 20-MW / 500-foot-setback limits, or could they be loosened?
4. To the City Council Utility Committee: How much new Entergy gas generation would even a 20-MW data center require, and who pays?
5. To the Sewerage & Water Board: Given the city's drainage and pump problems, could the system serve any data-center cooling load without hurting neighborhoods like Gentilly?
6. To the Council: Is the moratorium likely to be extended toward the full two years or made permanent for large facilities?

9. If You're Thinking About Moving Here

Neutral read:

• On data centers specifically, Gentilly is currently protected. There is no project here, no project proposed here, and a citywide moratorium plus draft rules (small size, 500-foot setback, 20-MW cap, S&WB/Entergy sign-off) aimed at keeping hyperscale campuses out of neighborhoods. That is the opposite of the Shreveport situation.
• The real Gentilly issues are the familiar New Orleans ones, independent of data centers: grid reliability (Entergy outages the City Council is investigating), Sewerage & Water Board drainage and pump problems, flood risk and insurance, and Katrina-legacy recovery.
• Watch the zoning vote. The one thing that could change the picture is the permanent data-center ordinance. If it's weakened, larger facilities could become possible somewhere in the city. Attend or comment at the CPC hearing.
• Unresolved: the final zoning rules and whether the moratorium becomes permanent for hyperscale.

Practical step: contact Council member Eugene Green's office (504-658-1040) and the City Planning Commission (504-658-7033) and ask to be notified of the data-center zoning public hearing.

10. Sources

All accessed 2026-08-02.

1. Verite News — "Council bans data centers for a year after citizen concerns" — https://veritenews.org/2026/01/28/data-centers-ban-new-orleans-council/
2. WWNO — "New Orleans City Council bans data center development for a year; here's why" — https://www.wwno.org/economy/2026-01-29/new-orleans-city-council-bans-data-center-development-for-a-year-heres-why
3. NOLA.com — "City Council eyes rules for data centers after New Orleans East project dies" — https://www.nola.com/news/business/new-orleans-east-data-center/article_b7397cf1-85d4-4dbc-8675-1da346539fd2.html
4. NOLA.com / Gambit — "City planners want to allow data centers in New Orleans" — https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/politics_elections/city-planning-commission-wants-to-allow-some-data-centers-in-new-orleans/article_f08d17d6-112a-432e-9c26-e25bf963a835.html
5. New Orleans City Council — "Approves Motions to Study Data Center Zoning and Temporary Restrictions" — https://council.nola.gov/news/january-2026/new-orleans-city-council-approves-motions-to-study/
6. The Lens — "'We aren't prepared': New Orleans City Council pushes Entergy on unreliable equipment" — https://thelensnola.org/2026/07/29/we-arent-prepared-new-orleans-city-council-pushes-entergy-on-unreliable-equipment/
7. NOLA.com — "New Orleans City Council moves to reopen investigation into Entergy after uptick in outages" — https://www.nola.com/news/politics/new-orleans-city-council-re-ups-entergy-outage-inquiry/article_e076d8a1-166c-4076-b37c-83684a5965fd.html
8. DatacenterMap — New Orleans data centers — https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/louisiana/new-orleans/
9. LouisianAI — Louisiana data centers (Meta Hyperion / Richland Parish statewide context) — https://louisianai.com/louisiana-data-centers
10. LED — Louisiana Economic Development data center page — https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/data-center
11. U.S. Drought Monitor — Louisiana — https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?LA=
12. New Orleans City Council — Eugene J. Green (District D) — https://council.nola.gov/councilmembers/eugene-j-green/
13. New Orleans City Council — members — https://council.nola.gov/councilmembers/
14. New Orleans City Council — Utility, Cable, Telecommunications & Technology Committee — https://council.nola.gov/committees/utility-cable-telecommunications-and-technology/dockets/new-orleans-power-station,-cost-recovery,-and-time/
15. New Orleans City Planning — Contact — https://nola.gov/next/city-planning/contact/