A Louis DeNaples-affiliated company and a Georgia-based warehouse developer recently revived their request for Throop to allow warehouses across nearly 800 acres of environmental conservation land, though they now have a different approach.
One week after rescinding a petition to principally permit warehouses in Throop’s environmental conservation zoning district, attorneys for Theta Land Corp. and Core5 Industrial Partners LLC filed a new zoning map amendment application and accompanying petition Sept. 22. They ask Throop to create a roughly 787-acre “Warehousing & Distribution Overlay District” on the same land east of the Casey Highway and opposite the Keystone Sanitary Landfill. Theta Land Corp., whose president and owner is landfill co-owner Louis DeNaples, owns about 735 of those acres, according to the filing.
The petition stresses that Core5 does not develop data centers.
Theta and Core5 of Atlanta entered into an agreement Aug. 21, 2025, for Core5 to purchase approximately 147 acres off Marshwood Road in the environmental zoning district “to construct and operate warehouse and distribution facilities,” according to a copy of the petition.
Representatives from Theta and Core5 went before the Throop Planning Commission on Tuesday with that request, facing opposition from multiple Lackawanna County residents, according to recordings of the meeting reviewed by The Times-Tribune. Planning commissions are advisory bodies. Any zoning changes will require a public hearing with approval from borough council.
Throop principally permits warehouse and distribution facilities in its general commercial, light industrial and heavy industrial zoning districts, which encompasses nearly 1,400 acres spanning from Underwood Road to the Casey Highway, including the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, according to the ordinance and zoning map.
The warehouse pitch
Theta and Core5 initially petitioned Throop on May 22 requesting to have warehouses zoned as principal permitted uses in the borough’s environmental conservation zoning district, or E-1 zone. Council scheduled a public hearing followed by a special meeting Sept. 15 to listen to testimony and consider the request, but the applicants rescinded their petition hours before the hearing, canceling it.
Principal permitted uses normally give developers the most direct path toward approval because they don’t require public hearings, but building a large warehouse would invoke a stipulation in Throop’s 2021 zoning ordinance that requires any building 30,000 square feet or larger to receive conditional-use approval from council.
The new application and petition have the same basic request — make warehouses principal permitted uses across Theta’s conservation land — but their new approach takes a different zoning path by seeking an overlay.
Overlay districts were rarely used in Lackawanna County until 2025 when municipalities began relying on them as a way to limit where developers can build data centers. Throop’s own data center zoning amendment, which council adopted in July, carved out a 351-acre overlay in the same conservation district on Theta’s land.
An overlay allows a municipality to designate a specific area for a certain land use, such as warehouses or data centers, on top of what is already allowed, while retaining the underlying zoning district. That means if the proposed overlay is not used for warehousing, the land retains its environmental conservation uses, compared to rezoning the land to a more intensive use that already permits warehousing.
Overlays also allow a municipality to only permit a development in certain sections of a zoning district without unilaterally permitting the use across every instance of the district.
While Theta and Core5’s proposed overlay would limit warehouses to the environmental conservation land on the east side of Throop, it would still encompass the majority of the borough’s conservation land. The only remaining conservation land outside of the overlay would be on the west side of the borough bordering Dickson City, Olyphant and Scranton.
Theta’s 735 acres are ideally located for warehouse and distribution facilities, Theta attorney Jeff Belardi said Tuesday, according to a recording of the meeting. Belardi described the site’s proximity to a major highway system and said the conservation district already has similar land uses with similar intensity in the E-1 district.
“The proposed amendment will not detract from the use and enjoyment of adjoining or nearby properties, or change the character of the zoning district,” Belardi said.
He compared it to other uses allowed in the district, including a wholesale nursery, mining, wind farms, solar farms and public utility facilities.
“The proposed amendment will not have a negative effect on the health, safety and general welfare of the community,” he said.
Asked during the meeting about their intentions for the rest of the property, Belardi said, “I can only tell you in general we don’t have any other deals.”
No one has approached them about data centers in the borough’s overlay, he said.
“Your amendment to your ordinance addressing data centers is very strict — I don’t know if we’ll ever get a data center there. I don’t think it would meet all those requirements, to be honest,” Belardi said. “But if we could get another warehouse here or another warehouse here, that would be ideal, but we don’t have anything teed up.”
Core5 selected the 147-acre tract for a warehouse because it was the easiest to develop, Belardi said.
Core5 does not develop data centers, and it does not have any interest in developing data centers, Core5 attorney Christopher Caputo said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Local concerns
During Tuesday’s meeting, multiple people spoke out against the requested zoning change. Elmhurst Twp. resident Nicholas Chludzinski told the planning commission that regional infrastructure, mountain hydrology and watershed protections don’t stop at municipal borders.
“You are being asked to look at a brand new application to change 700-plus acres of a protected conservation mountain into an industrial zone, but the legal and planning facts tonight are incredibly clear,” he said. “Pennsylvania law requires a borough to provide its fair share of industrial space. Throop already does that. … There is zero logical planning rationale to clear-cut a steep conservation mountain when pre-zoned land is sitting down the road.”
Sharon Soltis Sparano of La Plume Twp., who is president of a group appealing Throop’s data center zoning, questioned how much environmental land would be left if the overlay moves forward.
“What is left? Like maybe 100 acres? It’s minimum of environmental land,” she said, urging the planning commission, “We need to think about the cumulative impact on the people of this community where you sit there and make the decisions.”
Soltis Sparano, who heads Protectors of Water, Wildlife, Environment and Resources, or POWER, is a Republican candidate challenging state Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, Dunmore, for the state Senate seat in November.
Jefferson Twp. resident Judy Quinlan told the planning commission she is “deeply disturbed about the ruination of that 700 acres” of conservation land.
“The whole purpose of that was conservation, and it should stay that way,” she said, noting the traffic impacts on Marshwood Road and development’s effects on nearby Jefferson Twp.
She pointed to the former Marjol Battery superfund site and the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, saying, “Throop has suffered and suffered over the years of the different kinds of corporations and industrial uses.”
“The DeNaples family can take their warehouses somewhere else and enjoy it where nobody cares about it,” Quinlan said Tuesday. “We don’t want it in our area.”
Monday Update
THEN: Theta Land Corp. and Core5 rescinded their petition for a zoning change to principally permit warehouses across Throop’s environmental conservation zoning districts.
NOW: The groups reapplied for a zoning change to principally permit warehouses across a 787-acre overlay encompassing the majority of Throop’s environmental conservation land, attending a recent Throop Planning Commission meeting to discuss their request.