Allentown’s zoning hearing board this week will consider whether or not the city erred in declaring data centers a “permitted, by-right” use at a site on Emmaus Avenue.

Camelot for Children, a nonprofit organization that helps chronically and terminally ill children near where the center is proposed, has filed a legal zoning appeal seeking to challenge the city’s zoning decision, which has allowed the center to move forward in the city’s review process.

Quantm LLC, a Philadelphia data center development company, submitted plans to convert a 224,000-square-foot warehouse building at 2401 W. Emmaus Ave. into a data center.

The proposed data center is still awaiting a vote from the city’s planning commission that would allow developers to begin construction, but the city late last year determined that a data center may be treated as a “permitted-by-right” use in the I-3 zoning district, where the building is located.

Because the city’s zoning ordinance, at the time, did not account for data centers, the city is tasked with determining the most “closely allied use,” which it determined is manufacturing. Manufacturing buildings are permitted by right in the I-3 zoning district, according to the letter, and therefore data centers may also be built by right in that district.

However, in a formal legal appeal dated July 6, Kevin Fogerty, an attorney representing Camelot, argues that there is a “gross disparity” between data center and manufacturing uses, so the city’s determination that a data center is allowed by right at 2401 W. Emmaus Ave. is inappropriate and incorrect.

“Data centers do not remotely meet the definition of manufacturing as they do not treat or process raw products nor do they create articles or finished products from raw or prepared materials by giving them new forms or qualities,” Fogerty wrote.

Fogerty also cited the city’s new data center ordinance as evidence that it does not consider manufacturing use to be similar to data centers.

The hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday in City Hall.

Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.