The data center boom didn’t end in June. It just took a breath.
The Dodge Momentum Index, which tracks nonresidential projects entering the planning stage, fell 1.9% month over month, according to Dodge Construction Network. That snapped two consecutive monthly gains, and nearly all of the decline traces back to one sector.
Data center planning eases from record levels
Commercial planning, the category that holds data centers, dropped 6.8% for the month. But strip the data centers out and the picture inverts. Planning for offices, warehouses, retail and hotels all posted monthly gains.
“Data center activity continued to drive the index, but its pace moderated from the extraordinary levels seen in recent months and drove the DMI to pull back over the month,” said Sarah Martin, director of economic research at Dodge Construction Network. She added that nonresidential planning “remains on solid ground.”
The year-over-year numbers say the same thing more loudly. The index is up 21.8% against June 2025. Without data centers, commercial planning would show a 7.6% gain instead. That gap is the whole story of this cycle.
Institutional work picks up the slack
Institutional planning grew 10.9% month over month, with healthcare and education leading. The largest institutional projects to enter planning in June were a $437 million correctional facility in Nashville, a $320 million Cone Health hospital in Winston-Salem, and a $303 million El Camino Health hospital in Los Gatos, California.
On the commercial side the big three were all data centers anyway: a $500 million Stak Energy AI campus in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a $480 million complex in Lakeland, Florida, and a $456.8 million project in Manassas, Virginia. Fifty-nine projects valued at $100 million or more entered planning across the month.
What contractors should read into it
One month isn’t a trend, and a 1.9% dip off record highs isn’t a warning. The useful signal is underneath: for the first time in a while, the non-data-center economy contributed something. Healthcare and education backlogs have been thin for two years, and firms that don’t have a hyperscale practice have had very little to bid.
If institutional planning holds through the summer, the mix of work available in 2027 looks different from the mix available today. Watch the Alaska data center too. Prudhoe Bay is not a place anyone was planning compute capacity three years ago, and it says something about how far operators will go for power and cooling. See our coverage of the Novo Nordisk Clayton expansion for what a non-data-center nine-figure package now looks like, and Dodge’s June release for the underlying series.