SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa.- A long-awaited public meeting about a hyperscale data center campus proposal in Lehigh County is on the calendar this week.
The South Whitehall Township Planning Commission will hold a special meeting about Project Atlas on Wednesday, September 23.
The meeting will be held at Parkland High School, which is across the street from the 410-acre project site, a consolidation of three parcels owned by the Jeras Corporation.
The site is bordered by North Cedar Crest Boulevard to the west, Orefield Road and residential properties to the north, Mauch Chunk Road to the east, and an industrial site to the south. It’s currently used mostly for agricultural purposes.
Plans presented by CDE Acquisitions (Edged U.S. / Scannell Properties) have changed since they first surfaced late last year.
The current version shows a campus with three data center buildings (each about 492,285 square feet in size), an accessory building that’s 40,680 square feet, an electrical substation, a cell tower, 267 parking spaces, three retention ponds for stormwater management, and various buffering and landscaping additions.
The total building square footage of the campus is 1.5 million square feet.
There are three historic properties on the site: a barn, a four-bay brick house and a farmstead. Under the current plans, the barn will be restored and preserved, but the other two properties will be removed.
South Whitehall Township has posted a trove of documents related to the project, including a 240-page agenda packet that details the many departmental reviews, studies and correspondence between the township and the development team that preceded the meeting this week.
The most recent zoning review, dated September 3, is 62 pages in length and concludes with Zoning Officer and Director of Development Kent Baird recommending denial on the basis of non compliance.
In his review, Baird wrote that the “proposed plans have missing and incomplete information, lack of complete review information to base decisions on” under the township ordinance pertaining to nonresidential uses and how surrounding properties must be protected from air pollution, noise, vibrations and other disturbances.
Hundreds of emergency diesel fueled generators are included in the proposal.
The “applicant has not demonstrated how the entirety of this ordinance section will be complied with regarding impacts on neighbors and the community,” Baird wrote.
But a website created by the Project Atlas team touts the project as a gateway to “long-term jobs, stable tax revenue, and lasting community benefits with less day-to-day disruption than other permitted industrial uses.”
According to the website, the campus will support about 250 permanent jobs with annual wages between $65,000 and $75,000.
In addition, there will be 400-500 construction employees on site for the build-out; construction is expected to last four years.
“This property is already zoned for industrial development,” the website reads. “The question is not whether it will be developed, but what impact that development will have on the community.”
The public meeting on Wednesday, September 23 begins at 6 p.m. at Parkland High School at 2700 North Cedar Crest Boulevard.
The current deadline for the township to act on the Project Atlas plan is October 31.