Two Midvalley communities are working to enact stricter legislation governing data centers in the coming months with at least four developments proposed in their towns.
Archbald and Jessup are both navigating the zoning amendment process to update their land-use laws to address the large, computer-filled facilities rapidly looking to reshape Northeast Pennsylvania. Municipalities in Pennsylvania are required to allow for every type of land use within their boundaries, from landfills to solar farms, but for towns across Lackawanna County, including Jessup and Archbald, large-scale data center campuses were not even on their radar when they passed their zoning ordinances in recent years.
Archbald and Jessup are two of the only towns in Lackawanna County to even mention data centers in their zoning ordinances, but the boroughs did not clearly define them, viewing them more as small-scale uses and not high-tech behemoths covering potentially hundreds of acres.
Under their current zoning ordinances, both towns classify data centers as principally permitted uses, giving developers a more direct path toward approval compared to making them conditional uses, which require a public hearing and establish conditions for data centers to meet. Zoning applications and data center proposals now have the towns scrambling to pass comprehensive zoning amendments dictating where data centers can be built and reclassifying them as conditional uses.
Jessup scheduled a public hearing for its data center ordinance on Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. at the Borough Building, 395 Lane St.
Archbald council voted last week to give its solicitor the green light to advertise for a public hearing for a zoning ordinance amendment addressing data centers, though Archbald has not yet set a hearing date until the borough and county planning commissions finish reviewing the proposed ordinance, borough Manager Dan Markey said.
The borough hired engineering consulting firm Pennoni Inc., which has an office in Jessup, to guide it through the data center zoning process.
Archbald initially considered two separate ordinances, Markey said. The first would define data centers, data center equipment and data center accessory uses while also making them conditional uses, he said. The other would have gotten more detailed about requirements, like setback distances and noise levels, but borough officials decided to combine them into one, he said.
The proposed ordinance will create a data center overlay, which would allow council to vote on a data center in a certain area without rezoning the land, he said.
“We’re not changing the zones, we’re just overlaying these specific areas that were requested specifically by developers and potential developers saying, ‘Hey, we would like to put a data center here,’ ” Markey said. “If it doesn’t pan out, then it will revert back to the existing zoning use.”
Archbald now has three proposed data centers.
Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center Campus: A 17.2-million-square-foot proposed data center campus spanning nearly 400 mountainside acres along Business Route 6 and Wildcat Road, or Route 247. A firm first approached Archbald during a January council work session touting an estimated $2.1 billion investment. The data center campus would consist of 14 three-story-tall data center buildings, each with a 126,500-square-foot footprint, according to conceptual plans for the project. The land is currently zoned for resource conservation and medium/high density residential uses.
Project Gravity: A data center campus that would be built on just over 186 acres between Business Route 6 and the Eynon Jermyn Road, with entrances on both roads. Proposed by New York City-based Western Hospitality Partners, operating as Archbald 25 Developer LLC, Project Gravity would have at least six two-story data center buildings, each with a 135,000-square-foot footprint. The same developer has proposed data centers in Indiana and Illinois.
Archbald Data & Energy Center: A project to remove the Highway Auto Parts auto salvage yard on the Eynon Jermyn Road and build three data centers, each under 70 feet tall with a roughly 150,000-square-foot footprint, along with ancillary buildings and structures.
Jessup
Jessup previously held a zoning hearing for a data center amendment on June 11. Solicitor Maura Armezzani Tunis said there was no vote scheduled; the Jessup Planning Commission also did not recommend passage of that version of the draft ordinance.
Like Archbald’s ordinance, Armezzani Tunis said the proposed ordinance in Jessup would establish conditions for data centers while creating a data center overlay rather than adding them to a certain zoning district.
The borough hired Environmental Planning and Design of Pittsburgh to help it with the process, she said.
During the zoning process, Jessup received its first data center zoning application.
According to the application, which The Times-Tribune obtained via a Right to Know Law request on Wednesday, Breaker Street Associates LLC, One Tower Bridge, 100 Front St., Suite 560, West Conshohocken, applied June 10 to build a nearly 1.1-million-square-foot, 130-foot-tall data center facility off Breaker Street near Hill Street. The project would cover 131 acres, use 600 megawatts of power, use a public well and would have 150 parking spaces, according to the application. Concept plans attached to the application appear to show six buildings.
Breaker Street Associates shares an address with development firm Catalyst Commercial Development; Gabe Clark, the principal at Catalyst, signed the zoning application.
Breaker Street had previously been the location of a controversial warehouse proposal, which Jessup ultimately halted by applying stricter zoning to the land in 2019, leading to multiple lawsuits from the property owner and Developer William Rinaldi, the president of Pompey Coal Co. Rinaldi previously sold 65.35 acres for $3.8 million to Invenergy LLC in April 2016 to build its Lackawanna Energy Center natural gas-fired power plant.
Councilman Curt Camoni, who spearheaded Jessup’s data center legislation with Councilman Gregg Betti, emphasized that Jessup is not against data centers.
“We just want to make sure that the location where these large data center campuses are going is what’s best for the community,” he said. “That’s what (the zoning ordinance) will be a reflection of. … We just want to make sure that where they are located is in the best interest of the residents of Jessup.”