First Hearing Date Set For Plymouth Twp. Data Center Proposal

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, PA — The first public hearing date for the intensely unpopular data center proposal at the old Cleveland Cliffs steel mill site has been set.

The meeting will be held on June 25 at 7 p.m. at Colonial Middle School, located on 716 Belvoir Road in Plymouth Meeting.

See previous coverage: After Public Firestorm, Developer Tries Again For Data Center In Plymouth Twp.

That's a notably larger forum than the Plymouth Township building, where hearings that drew crowds of hundreds were held the first time that developer Brian O'Neill attempted this proposal.

The decision by township supervisors to hold the meeting in a larger forum, presumably to accommodate the size of anticipated crowds of opponents, stands in contrast to moves made in nearby Limerick Township, which responded to massive crowds by moving hearings to smaller venues.

The June 25 hearing is open to the public, but will not involve public comment, officials said. It's believed that numerous hearings will be required to fully resolve the proposal.

"The matter is expected to continue over multiple hearings due to the anticipated scope of testimony and evidence," Plymouth Township said in a statement.

It's not yet clear which meetings will allow public comment.

The planning commission voted 4-0 against recommending the data center proposal on 900 Conshohocken Road last year. This is essentially the same application, and will face nearly all of the same issues the first application did.

According to emails obtained in a Right to Know request by the advocacy group Concerned Citizens of Montour County, O'Neill has been lobbying the Shapiro administration to put together legislation that would require anyone who wants to appeal a data center project to post a bond that is worth double the cost of the project.

"Example, if a $2 million project is postponed due to an appeal, they should have to post a bond for $4 million," O'Neill wrote to Benjamin Kirshner, Shapiro's "chief transformation officer."

That same trove of emails also revealed numerous communications between Amazon and the Shapiro administration, including efforts to keep Amazon's identity as the developer behind numerous projects in Pennsylvania a secret.

The chief legal issue with the Plymouth site remains zoning, and the chief controversy will remain how data centers are zoned, based on their widespread impacts on community and environmental health.

The Cleveland Cliffs site is within the township's Heavy Industrial zoning district. Data centers are not a covered industrial use, so the application must obtain a special exception to the ordinance. From a purely legal perspective, the township must determine if the proposal meets the existing ordinance’s "standards and intent."

The proposal calls for a 2.2. million square foot facility on the 66 acre site.