Eynon Jermyn Road in Archbald has quickly become Northeast Pennsylvania’s data center hot spot as developers look to build nearly 30 data center buildings within about a mile.

A developer applied with Archbald this month to build 22 data center buildings across two campuses between Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6, bringing the total number of proposed data centers in the area to 29 buildings spanning four campuses. The latest proposals come from Archbald I LLC, which filed two zoning permit applications Oct. 22 to build two data center campuses — one campus with 18 data center buildings beginning about 40 feet north of Staback Park on Eynon Jermyn Road, and another with four data center buildings near the border of Archbald and Jermyn above the juncture of Eynon Jermyn Road and Washington Avenue, according to documents obtained by The Sunday Times via a Right to Know Law request filed with Archbald.

All 22 buildings would have a roughly 150,000-square-foot footprint, though their heights vary between the two campuses, which are on either side of Project Gravity — another proposed data center campus that will have six buildings between Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6.

With the new applications, Lackawanna County is up to eight proposed data center campuses, with five in Archbald, two in Jessup and a large campus in Clifton and Covington townships along Interstate 380. A developer involved with two of Archbald’s data center projects also applied in August to build a data center campus on residential land in Blakely near Business Route 6, Terrace Drive and Keystone Avenue, but that project was quickly withdrawn amid opposition from the community without receiving zoning relief.

Half of all data center proposals in the county are now on the same stretch of Eynon Jermyn Road. With all four projects principally permitted by Archbald’s zoning after council was unable to pass legislation in October restricting data centers, if everything moves forward, Eynon Jermyn Road could have nearly 4.73 million square feet of data center buildings based on footprint alone, excluding supplemental buildings and infrastructure such as office buildings, access roads, substations, generator yards and parking lots. That’s enough data centers to cover about 82 football fields.

About the projects

Archbald I LLC did not include information in its zoning applications identifying the company behind the projects. The limited liability company applied with the address 108 Lakeland Ave., Dover, Delaware, which is the address of Capitol Services, a Delaware registered-agent and corporate-filing firm. Delaware’s corporate filing database shows Archbald I LLC incorporated Oct. 14, just eight days before applying in Archbald. The company does not appear in Pennsylvania’s corporation search.

Law firm McNees, Wallace & Nurick of Harrisburg is listed as the contact for the applicant.

The larger of the two proposals with its 18 data center buildings would be built across a nearly 17.8-million-square-foot lot, or 408 acres, with about 7 million square feet of impervious area, which includes buildings and paved surfaces. Each data center would be up to 55 feet tall with an accompanying 75,000-square-foot generator yard.

The campus would be next to Archbald’s Staback Park and the Archbald Pothole State Park. An attached plan shows an interior road essentially running along the project’s border with the two parks; two data center buildings would be within 125 feet of the parks. The campus would have 720 parking spaces with entrances on Business Route 6 and Eynon Jermyn Road.

The land is zoned for general commercial, commercial/light industrial and general industrial uses, all of which currently permit data centers in Archbald.

As part of its application, Archbald I LLC listed every property owner whose land would be purchased to build the data centers. They are:

• Anthony Domiano Jr. and the Domiano Family Trust

• Domiano Family Trust, with Anthony Domiano signing as trustee

• Anthony R. Domiano Jr. and Karen E. Domiano

• Carla D. and Joseph Campolieto

• Marie Domiano Nieto and Gregory Nieto

• New Venture Realty Inc., with David Stafursky signing as president

• John J. Shnipes Jr. and Jamie Lynn Shnipes

Moving north, Archbald I LLC’s second, smaller campus would have four data center buildings. Like the larger project, each building would have a 150,000-square-foot footprint, but they would be up to 70 feet tall, rather than 55 feet. Plans show the main access road entering near the juncture of Eynon Jermyn Road and Washington Avenue, with a second, smaller road extending off Lackawanna Street in Jermyn. The project would build data centers near homes in Jermyn, including those along Lackawanna Street and Gibson Street.

The campus would encompass a nearly 2.9 million-square-foot lot, or just shy of 66 acres, with around 1.5 million square feet of impervious space. It would have 160 parking spaces, and the land is zoned general commercial.

The property owners who would sell their land are Jason P. Colachino and Janine Colachino, according to the permit application.

The two sites would flank Project Gravity’s six data center buildings.

Archbald’s other data centers are:

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 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 and would need to be rezoned to move forward.

Project Gravity: A data center campus that would be built on just over 186 acres between Business Route 6 and 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. The project includes purchasing the Valley View Estates mobile home park, displacing the park’s roughly three dozen residents.

Project Boson: Formerly called the Archbald Data & Energy Center, Project Boson will remove the Highway Auto Parts auto salvage yard on Eynon Jermyn Road and build a nearly 620,000-square-foot data center in its place, according to a land development plan obtained Friday by The Sunday Times via a Right to Know Law request. The project initially proposed building three data centers, each under 70 feet tall with a roughly 150,000-square-foot footprint, but it subsequently merged those buildings into one larger facility.

Project Gravity and Project Boson are tied to Jim Marzolino, the president of Kriger Construction. Marzolino was also a co-developer of the now-withdrawn Blakely data center proposal, along with Alpesh “Al” Patel of the Al’s Quick Stop convenience store chain. Marzolino signed the initial zoning permit application for the Archbald Data & Energy Center in April, with Dave Stiles of Kriger Construction signing an Aug. 18 subdivision/land development application form for Project Boson.

Marzolino intends to sell the Project Gravity land to Western Hospitality Partners. Western Hospitality Partners – Jermyn LLC signed a memorandum of purchase and sale agreement Oct. 15, 2024, to buy the 186.21-acre parcel from property owner Five Up Realty LLC, 805 Enterprise St., Dickson City. Marzolino signed on behalf of Five Up. The agreement, which was recorded with the Lackawanna County Recorder of Deeds on Oct. 21, 2024, does not include a sale price.

Archbald’s zoning

Archbald I LLC’s applications are the first data center proposals Archbald has received since Oct. 3 when borough council held a special meeting to consider adopting an ordinance regulating data centers and restricting where they could be built. A motion to consider the ordinance failed to receive a second after more than two dozen residents testified against it, stopping it from coming to a vote.

The proposal drew pushback from residents, who urged the borough to reduce the number of places it allowed data centers from four to one while advocating for even more restrictions to be placed on them. Residents subsequently petitioned the borough to amend and reconsider the zoning ordinance with even more safeguards and fewer areas to build them.

Any data center applications received prior to the ordinance would have operated under the previous zoning, but the legislation would have applied to any future applications, including Archbald I LLC’s.

Archbald was initially one of the only communities in Lackawanna County to include data centers in its zoning when it adopted its current ordinance in March 2023, which permits data centers in its general commercial, commercial/light industrial, light industrial and general industrial zoning districts. Although the ordinance does not define data centers, officials at the time viewed them as smaller external server buildings, not large campuses.

As data center developers began showing interest in the town, borough officials worked this year to draft a data center zoning ordinance that would have made data centers conditional uses in four overlay districts throughout the town, removing their permitted use designation. As conditional uses, data center developers would have been required to attend a public hearing before council while adhering to conditions established by the borough.

The proposed overlays were:

• Hundreds of acres along Business Route 6 and Route 247, which are zoned for conservation and medium/high-density residential uses. This is the site of the proposed Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center.

• The wooded area immediately north of the Archbald Pothole State Park and Staback Park along Business Route 6 and the Eynon Jermyn Road. This is Archbald I LLC’s 18-building data center campus.

• Industrial land along Power Boulevard and in the Valley View Business Park.

• A narrow L-shaped band on the outskirts of Stavola Silverbrook Land LLC’s mining land along the Casey Highway near Aylesworth Park and the Jefferson Twp. border.
To allow data centers, a property would have been required to be at least 120 acres; located close to a high-voltage power transmission line or facility capable of transmitting 230 kilovolts or more; and have direct access to an arterial or collector street, according to the draft ordinance. Data centers would be restricted to 90 feet tall, though they could exceed that as a conditional use for water and cooling towers.

The data center overlay district would have prohibited the use of nuclear-, coal- and oil-powered generation for full-time electrical generators; emergency and backup generators could use diesel fuel, according to the ordinance.

Data centers also would have been restricted to be at least 300 feet from residential areas, and they would have been required to conduct a sound study approved by the borough’s professional acoustical expert, with a preliminary study as well as an “as-built” study nine months after the data center received its certificate of occupancy and at full occupancy; an as-built sound study could also have been required afterward at the borough’s request, according to the ordinance. Data centers would have had to use public water and sewer facilities, and if a data center used nonpublic water sources, it would have had to conduct a water feasibility study.

Other proposed requirements included architectural design guidelines, buffer requirements and berm requirements to minimize visual impacts, sound restrictions and requirements to abide by environmental regulators.

If council had passed the ordinance, it would have pushed the 18-building campus farther away from Staback Park and Archbald Pothole State Park due to 200-foot setback requirements, compared to the currently proposed 40-foot setbacks, and it would have prevented the four-building campus near the Jermyn border. Consequently, it would have given the Wildcat Ridge project the zoning relief it needs, though it would still be required to go through the conditional use process.

‘What we were afraid of’

When borough officials drafted their data center zoning ordinance, they had especially worried about developers building smaller campuses close to residential areas, like Archbald I LLC’s four-building campus, Archbald Council President Dave Moran said.

“This is … exactly what we were afraid of,” he said. “That was our fear, and that’s why the ordinance that we were proposing addressed all that.”

Moran emphasized that the ordinance did not approve any data centers, it would have just put guide rails in place to regulate them, he said.

Without the 200-foot setback from Staback Park, the large campus will “feel like it’s in the park,” and vegetation and buffer requirements would have been protective of the park, he said.

If council had adopted the ordinance, Archbald I LLC would have had to request a conditional hearing and obtain letters of intent from utility companies before the borough held a public hearing, Moran said. During the hearing, the developer would present its plans to the public for input, and council would consider that input, with the ability to put more restrictions on the project, he said.

The borough’s zoning/code enforcement officer and planning commission will still review the plans, ensuring they meet the borough’s current code, Moran said.

“Now, it’s just a matter of, if they meet the minimum requirements, that’s all they need to do,” he said.

Borough officials spent about eight months working on the ordinance, starting when they first started receiving interest from data centers around the beginning of the year, Moran said. The borough hired Philadelphia-based engineering consulting company Pennoni Inc. to help it navigate the process, and the borough manager and zoning/code enforcement officer visited data centers, he said.

Moran still hopes council will adopt the ordinance.

If Archbald starts over with a new ordinance, it will take four to six months, he said.

“In the meantime, there’s a lot of developers over there that are looking at a piece of the land,” he said. “You’re going to have a bunch of smaller (data centers) all around.”

In neighboring Jermyn, the town’s residents will be close to the newly proposed data centers, but they won’t reap any of the tax benefits.

Jermyn Council President Frank Kulick said he’s concerned and will look at every avenue, though he doesn’t know what his town can do.

“We’re certainly concerned, and we’re certainly going to look at all avenues, including if we can’t stop it, at least ways for Jermyn to have some kind of financial gain by it, but I’m more concerned about the power and the water and all those things that I read about that have become concerns for our residents,” Kulick said. “It’s frightening.”

Jermyn sent Archbald a letter in August asking them to take their neighbors into consideration. The borough was especially concerned with setbacks and requested a minimum of 300 feet from Jermyn’s border. Archbald did not respond to the letter, Kulick said.

He intends to contact state Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-112, Blakely, and state Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-40, Middle Smithfield Twp., looking for help.

“I’m not sure what they can do, but we can’t just sit back and do nothing,” Kulick said.