Two New York companies secured nearly 500 mountainside acres above Archbald’s Eynon and Sturges sections intended for the borough’s largest proposed data center campus.
Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management LLC applied with Archbald in December for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, which proposes to build 14 two-story data centers, each up to 80 feet tall with a 202,340-square-foot footprint, across 574.2 acres along Business Route 6 and Route 247, or Wildcat Road. The two New York-based limited liability companies with similar names — one directly tied to Cornell Realty Management — acquired 495 acres of the proposed campus March 20, according to a property transaction recorded Thursday and a sale agreement recorded Monday with the Lackawanna County recorder of deeds.
The data center campus has not been approved by Archbald Borough Council, which plans to hold its third public hearing on the project in April.
Wildcat Ridge became Lackawanna County’s first proposed data center campus when representatives approached Archbald in January 2025 during a council work session. The campus is one of six proposed data center projects in Archbald and one of at least a dozen throughout Lackawanna County.
It has gained notoriety due to its water and electricity demands. The campus could use just over 3.3 million gallons of water per day during the hottest summer weather while needing 1.6 gigawatts, or 1,600 megawatts, of electricity to power its data centers. By comparison, the Lackawanna Energy Center natural gas power plant in Jessup produces 1,485 megawatts.
The campus could have as many as 41 backup diesel generators per data center, each with a 2,000-gallon fuel tank, totaling 574 generators and 1,148,000 gallons of diesel fuel, according to testimony from project representatives during public hearings this year. Plans also call for two user substations and a PPL Electric Utilities switchyard. The switchyard is part of a large PPL infrastructure project centered in Archbald.
In addition to data centers, Cornell plans to build 316,000 square feet of commercial space, including a 50,000-square-foot grocery store with 1,800 square feet of retail space; two four-story, 85,000-square-foot buildings, with one mixed use and the other an office; and a 96,000-square-foot surface parking lot with about 360 spaces. During a January public hearing on the development, the campus’s project manager characterized the grocery store as “Trader Joe’s, or something like that.”
The land had previously been slated for 1,930 multifamily residential units, 120 residential lots and about 1.2 million square feet of commercial building space, filling a similar footprint as the data center campus.
On March 20, two companies secured the majority of the land needed for the campus.
Pine Hill Dream Inc., which describes itself as having an Eynon office while using an address in New York, purchased 245 acres from Pine Line Inc. of Eynon for $3.2 million, according to a property transaction recorded Thursday. Pine Line and Pine Hill Dream entered into a memorandum of commercial purchase agreement for the property last year on May 16, which was recorded with the county May 21.
The 245 acres are the upper portion of the campus and extend from the Blakely border near PPL’s existing Lackawanna Substation, continuing east above Business Route 6. Jeffrey and Alan Rudalavage signed the deed on behalf of Pine Line as the president and secretary, respectively; Abraham Rosenberg signed for Pine Hill Dream with the address 7 Meribeth Lane, Monroe, New York. The deed carves out exceptions for existing businesses: the law office of Mark Rudalavage at 171 Scranton Carbondale Highway, Pine Line Auto Sales’ showroom and car lot at 151 Scranton Carbondale Highway, Krisiak Chiropractic Office at 157 Scranton Carbondale Highway, and Pine Line Auto Sales’ garage.
The same day that Pine Hill Dream and Pine Line closed on the 245 acres, Archbald Pines LLC, 75 Huntington St., Brooklyn, New York, entered into a memorandum of purchase and sale agreement with Archbald Ventures LLC, 1 Executive Blvd., Suite 101, Suffern, New York, for the adjacent 250 acres on the lower half of the mountain below Pine Hill Dream’s newly acquired land, according to a copy of the agreement recorded Monday. The closing will be June 1, though the buyer can extend it to Dec. 31, according to the agreement.
Isaac Hager signed the agreement as a member of Archbald Pines; Hager is listed as the managing partner of Cornell Realty Management in Wildcat Ridge’s Dec. 15 conditional use application filed with Archbald. Although the application uses the address 347 Flushing Ave., Suite 800, Brooklyn, for Cornell Realty, attached plans in the application refer to Cornell’s address as 75 Huntington St., Brooklyn — the same address as Archbald Pines LLC.
Both Pine Hill Dream and Archbald Pines also used the same law firm, Jeffrey Zwick & Associates PC.
Pine Line Inc. previously sold the 250 acres to Archbald Ventures LLC for $4 million, according to a property transaction recorded Feb. 22, 2024.
Cornell Realty’s conditional use application for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus directly references both properties as part of its application. The company also plans to purchase land from Timothy J. Seaman and James L. and Michael A. Booth, according to its conditional use application.
The properties, including the 495 acres from Pine Line, listed in the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus’s conditional use application. (SCREENSHOT VIA CORNELL REALTY MANAGEMENT’S DEC. 15 CONDITIONAL USE APPLICATION)
As of Monday afternoon, there were no recent deeds or sales agreements filed with Lackawanna County for the Seaman or Booth properties, which would total about 80 acres.
Archbald previously held hearings for the campus Jan. 28 and March 10, where the proposal faced resistance from the public and elected leaders, including Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan and state Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-112, Blakely.
At the conclusion of the March 10 hearing, the borough announced the next hearing on Wildcat Ridge would be April 13.