{"id":119997,"date":"2026-02-21T18:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/119997\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:10:07","slug":"pennsylvania-farmer-refused-a-15-million-offer-from-big-tech-developers-for-his-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/119997\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania farmer refused a $15 million offer from big tech developers for his property"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Pennsylvania<\/a>\u00a0farmer turned down the chance to become<\/a> a multimillionaire in order to\u00a0preserve<\/a>\u00a0his land.<\/p>\n

When a\u00a0data center developer<\/a>\u00a0wanted to snap up 86-year-old\u00a0Mervin Raudabaugh\u2019s 261 acres over two farms in Mechanicsburg, it dangled $15 million in front of the lifelong farmer.<\/p>\n

But Raudabaugh turned the windfall down, choosing instead to transfer the land at a fraction of the offered price to a land trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my life,\u201d Raudabaugh told\u00a0Fox 43 News<\/a>\u00a0of the land he has farmed for 50 years. \u201cI told [the data center company] no, I was not interested in destroying my farms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really the bottom line,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much the economic end of it. I just didn\u2019t want to see these two farms destroyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly the land that is preserved here is going to be here. The rest, every square inch, is going to get built on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than see that happen, he sold development rights to a trust that will make sure the land is only ever used for agriculture.<\/p>\n

But Raudabaugh turned the windfall down, choosing instead to transfer the land at a fraction of the offered price to a land trust. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Lancaster Farmland Trust<\/a>\u00a0(LTF), a nonprofit that preserves land in Cumberland County, compensated the farmer with about $2 million\u2014a small percentage of what he could have earned if he\u2019d turned his acres of lush farmland over for development as a hulking data center.<\/p>\n

The land can still be sold in the future, but only to someone who will use it for agricultural purposes.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania and data centers<\/p>\n

The state is a prime picking spot for\u00a0data center development<\/a>, due to its large plots of open farmland and proximity to transportation corridors and major power companies.<\/p>\n

Last year, residents of\u00a0Valley View Estates<\/a>\u00a0mobile park in\u00a0Archbald, PA,<\/a>\u00a0got news that the owner of their community had entered into a\u00a0binding sales agreement<\/a>\u00a0and that the new owners were linked to Project Gravity, a planned data center development that will span at least\u00a0six buildings and 1.62 million square feet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Lackawanna County, there are\u00a0at least\u00a011 data center campuses<\/a>\u00a0proposed by developers, six of which are in Archbald. Commissioner\u00a0Bill Gaughan\u00a0has asked Gov.\u00a0Josh Shapiro\u00a0and the Pennsylvania General Assembly for a three-year statewide moratorium on new large-scale data center approvals to study their impact.<\/p>\n

The land can still be sold in the future, but only to someone who will use it for agricultural purposes. Shutterstock \/ Bo Shen<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Pennsylvanians have real concerns about these data centers and the impact they could have on our communities, our utility bills, and our environment,\u201d Shapiro said at his Feb. 3 budget address. \u201cAnd so do I.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saving land from development<\/p>\n

Founded in 1988, the Lancaster Farmland Trust has since saved over 38,310 acres with 618 conservation easements.<\/p>\n

The LTF can do so thanks to a voter-approved referendum passed in 2013, which allowed a slight increase to Silver Spring Township\u2019s earned income tax in order to fund the conservation of farmland, forests, and open space.<\/p>\n

The cost to taxpayers averages only about $120 per household annually, according to\u00a0Lancaster Farming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once the land the easement is in place, the LTF \u201cmakes sure farmland remains a farm forever,\u201d CEO\u00a0Jeff Swinehart\u00a0tells\u00a0Realtor.com\u00ae<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While large plots of open land have long made business developers salivate, the risk of prime farmland being lost to data centers is somewhat new and rapidly increasing due to the expansion of AI.<\/p>\n

The cost to taxpayers averages only about $120 per household annually, according to\u00a0Lancaster Farming. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Builders of data centers\u2014which can include deep-pocketed companies such as Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Apple\u2014can offer unprecedented paydays.<\/p>\n

A preservation group like the LTF can compensate a landowner only about 20% of what the land is worth to a developer, says Swinehart, making it extremely difficult to compete in this market.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, society views agricultural land as not in its highest and best use,\u201d he says. \u201cThat it is \u2018idle\u2019 land waiting for some better use. So it becomes an easy target for any type of development.\u201d<\/p>\n

With older generations of farmers aging out of the agricultural life, it\u2019s a pivotal time for the future of farmland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of cases, what we see is the tension between siblings when they\u2019re left a farm property, and wanting to maximize the cash return on that asset,\u201d says Swinehart.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve experienced numerous cases where it\u2019s four, five, six siblings, and one may want to preserve [the land] and the others do not. So the default reaction is \u2018We\u2019ll just sell it.\u2019 What does that mean for the landscape?\u201d<\/p>\n

With older generations of farmers aging out of the agricultural life, it\u2019s a pivotal time for the future of farmland. UCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Raudabaugh told media outlets that the data center builder (he did not name it) who approached him was relentless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people have hounded the living daylights out of me,\u201d Raudabaugh told Lancaster Farming. Realtor.com has reached out to Raudabaugh for comment.<\/p>\n

The farmer\u2019s deep connection to his land\u2014he told one outlet that his mother died in his arms inside the barn\u2014meant he had no interest in handing it over to a data center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were, in his view, harassing him to the point that his attorney was considering filing against them in court,\u201d\u00a0Laura Brown, vice chair of the Silver Spring board of supervisors, told\u00a0WHTM<\/a>. Brown then approached the township\u2019s land trust partner, LTF, for help.<\/p>\n

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Swinehart tells Realtor.com he doesn\u2019t know the exact details of how the data center developer approached the elderly farmer, but his understanding of developers\u2019 methods is that \u201cthey walk up farm lanes and knock on doors, and if they get a no, they come back again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trust can\u2019t compete with big-pocketed developers from a monetary standpoint, he says. \u201cBut where we can compete is in upholding the value that these farmers have for the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a legacy that farm families want to leave, but it\u2019s deeper than the legacy of an individual. It\u2019s a passion for the land itself, and the desire to make sure that the land can provide for continuing generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, for that, he says, passionate farmers such as Raudabaugh are \u201cwilling to give up significant monetary gain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pennsylvania\u00a0farmer turned down the chance to become a multimillionaire in order to\u00a0preserve\u00a0his land. When a\u00a0data center developer\u00a0wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7985,5626,56792,83,28,30,29,1081],"class_list":{"0":"post-119997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-development","9":"tag-farming","10":"tag-farms","11":"tag-money","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","14":"tag-pennsylvania-news","15":"tag-real-estate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}