ARCHBALD \u2014 A packed gymnasium erupted into applause Friday afternoon when borough council voted to deny a developer\u2019s plans to build 18 data centers along Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6.<\/p>\n
Council\u2019s decision to deny Archbald I LLC\u2019s proposed Project Scott data center campus with a 5-0 vote received a standing ovation from the crowd of 200-plus in the Municipal Building for the early afternoon meeting. Council President Louis Rapoch, Vice President Joseph Altier III and council members Erin Owen, Marie Andreoli and Tom Aniska all voted to deny the data center campus\u2019s conditional use application. The denial was Aniska\u2019s final vote on council. The first-term councilman, who took office in January, announced his resignation due to health reasons immediately after the vote; council then voted to accept his resignation.<\/p>\n
Councilmen Dave Moran and Richard Guman were absent.<\/p>\n
Archbald received a conditional use application for the data center campus Dec. 16 when Provident Realty Advisors of Dallas, Texas, which operates as Provident Data Centers, applied for 18 data centers, each up to 90 feet tall with a 154,850-square-foot footprint across about 400 acres. The nearest data centers would be just over 200 feet from Archbald\u2019s Staback Park.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, or MPC, which provides the legal framework for municipal zoning, requires that municipalities hold the first hearing within 60 days and subsequent hearings within 45 days.<\/p>\n
Council held its first hearing Feb. 11, but due to time constraints, the borough only listened to testimony from two of the developer\u2019s five planned witnesses. Testimony from residents would\u2019ve then followed.<\/p>\n
Archbald scheduled its second hearing for Monday, but the borough had to cancel the hearing because it was not properly advertised. The MPC requires that public notices are advertised in the newspaper of general circulation \u2014 in this case, The Times-Tribune \u2014 for two consecutive weeks. Solicitor Jay O\u2019Connor\u2019s law office submitted public notices to run March 8 and March 15. The borough discovered Monday prior to the hearing that\u00a0due to a clerical error at the newspaper, the notices were never published.<\/p>\n
As a result, council could not hold the hearing, but because the MPC requires subsequent hearings to be held within 45 days unless the applicant agrees to an extension, which Provident did not. The borough had to make a decision by Saturday, or Provident\u2019s conditional use application would have been deemed an approval under the MPC.<\/p>\n
Attendees during Friday\u2019s meeting overwhelmingly opposed the proposal, with 12 speakers, including Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, urging council to deny the application. Concerns included water and electricity consumption, noise, emissions, deforestation, proximity to homes, schools and parks, and property values.<\/p>\n
Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARCHBALD \u2014 A packed gymnasium erupted into applause Friday afternoon when borough council voted to deny a developer\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2117,2116,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-150293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-archbald","9":"tag-data-centers","10":"tag-lackawanna-county","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-scranton","15":"tag-scranton-headlines","16":"tag-scranton-news","17":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150293","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=150293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}