A junkyard on the Eynon Jermyn Road in Archbald could become data centers.
A developer filed a zoning application with the borough April 10 looking to convert the Highway Auto Parts auto salvage yard into the “Archbald Data & Energy Center.” The proposed data and energy center would consist of three two-story data center buildings, each under 70 feet tall with roughly 150,000-square-foot footprints; two sites for equipment yards and ancillary buildings; a one-story, 20,000-square-foot office and operations building; and a roughly 211,000-square-foot equipment yard for electrical substations, switch equipment and related items, according to zoning documents obtained by The Times-Tribune on Tuesday via a Right to Know Law request filed with Archbald.
The zoning application lists a 1.6 million square foot impervious area, which would include buildings and pavement, across a 3.75 million square foot lot.
The proposed data center site would be adjacent to the Highlands at Archbald housing development.
The Highlands at Archbald sign along Eynon Jermyn Rd. in Archbald on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The data center buildings are anticipated to have concrete walls and flat roofs, according to the plans.
The Archbald Data & Energy Center is the third data center development proposed for Archbald in recent months, and the second involving James Marzolino, who signed the Archbald Data & Energy Center zoning permit application. Marzolino, of Five Up Realty LLC, 805 Enterprise St., Dickson City, previously signed a memorandum of purchase and sale agreement Oct. 15 to buy a 186.21-acre parcel just north of the junkyard on the opposite side of the Eynon Jermyn Road. For that development, a New York City-based firm, Western Hospitality Partners, operating as Archbald 25 Developer LLC, submitted plans to Archbald looking to build “Project Gravity” — a six data center campus that would span the wooded area from the Eynon Jermyn Road to Business Route 6.
Attempts to reach Marzolino were unsuccessful Wednesday. Highway Auto Parts currently still owns the property.
According to an addendum in the Archbald Data & Energy Center’s zoning application, Marzolino would remove the junkyard and its facilities to build the data centers and associated buildings, access points, interior roads and other improvements. The 86.1-acre site is approximately 40% covered by an auto salvage yard and retail sales building; the salvage yard currently accepts, stores and cannibalizes automobiles and light trucks, using heavy machinery and regular deliveries and shipments of junk automobiles and parts, according to the addendum.
The addendum estimates the data center development would employ 50 to 60 workers, compared to fewer than 30 at Highway Auto. Daily traffic would be limited to service employees, technicians and engineers who operate and maintain the data center.
Upon zoning approval, the developer would submit a land development plan including detailed site plans with locations of all improvements, as well as grading, utilities, stormwater management facilities and erosion and sedimentation controls.
The data centers would be built as close to the center of the parcel as possible to maximize the distance of the buildings from the residential neighborhoods to the east and south of the parcel, with the proposed plan calling for 200-foot buffers with appropriate setbacks from that buffer area, according to the addendum.
The project will maintain or supplement the existing vegetation for the buffer.
With the proposed data center next to his Highlands at Archbald development, which includes housing and a Club at the Highlands venue with a nine-hole golf course, Ken Powell, the owner of Powell Developments, does not believe the data centers will impact his Highlands development.
“We’ve sheltered ourself from the junkyard right from day one,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday, explaining he used barriers, banks and trees to separate his properties from the junkyard. “It’s not like they’re going to be seen from our place.”
He did raise concerns about noise, though he hasn’t heard anything definitive about the proposed data center.
“From the way I look at it, it’s not going to be any worse conditions than I had with the junkyard,” Powell said. “If anything, it creates jobs, and it brings money into the area.”
The site for the proposed data center falls into a C-2 general commercial zoning district, and data centers are currently principally permitted uses in C-2 zones in Archbald.
For principally permitted uses, the borough’s zoning officer will issue a permit if a developer’s zoning application meets all of the requirements contained in Archbald’s zoning ordinance, according to the zoning ordinance, which the borough adopted in March 2023.
Conditional uses require written approval from borough council following a hearing, according to Archbald’s zoning ordinance. That means data center developers would have to attend a public hearing, which would be advertised in The Times-Tribune’s legal notices, where borough officials and residents could ask questions. Should council decide to approve the conditional use, borough officials could tie conditions to their approval.
However, until council adopts that amended zoning legislation, any data center to apply with the borough will be grandfathered in under the current zoning, even if Archbald council later applies more stringent requirements.
Archbald was first approached during a January council work session by a firm looking to invest an estimated $2.1 billion for “Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center Campus” totaling 17.2 million square feet, plus about 1.2 million square feet of commercial space, across nearly 400 mountainside acres along Business Route 6 and Wildcat Road, or Route 247. That development would encompass 394 acres bounded by a PPL access road across from Terrace Drive to its west, continuing east along Business Route 6 until its split with Wildcat Road, and then moving up Wildcat for more than half a mile. 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.
Because hundreds of acres of that property are zoned for resource conservation and residential housing, Archbald Borough Manager Dan Markey said Wednesday that the borough would have to rezone the land or grant a potential data center overlay. Otherwise, a zoning application would be rejected.
Then, Western Hospitality Partners submitted a sketch plan ahead of the borough’s April 2 planning commission meeting for a second data center campus known as Project Gravity. Although smaller than the first proposed data center, Project Gravity would be built on just over 186 acres between Business Route 6 and the Eynon Jermyn Road, with entrances on either road. A sketch plan for the project calls for at least six two-story data center buildings, each with a 135,000-square-foot footprint.
Project Gravity has since submitted its preliminary land development plan and zoning application, Markey said.
“Until the law is changed, the borough has to follow the law as it is written,” Markey said of Archbald’s current zoning allowing data centers as principally permitted uses.