Yet another data center plan has been received by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.<\/p>\n
This one is for Allen Township and it proposes converting a 1 million-square-foot warehouse owned by logistics real estate company Prologis at 2500 Liberty Drive, about a half-mile from the Northampton borough line.<\/p>\n
The LVPC\u2019s Comprehensive Planning Committee will discuss a draft letter reviewing the project during its monthly virtual meeting at noon Tuesday<\/a>. If the letter to Allen Township is approved, it would be taken up by the full LVPC on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n The township\u2019s Board of Supervisors approved an amended preliminary\/final land development plan for the project in March. The plan is to convert Prologis Lehigh Valley East 16, which was built in 2023.<\/p>\n The draft letter, written by LVPC Chief Community and Regional Planner Jill Seitz, noted that repurposing an industrial building is supported by Future LV, the commission\u2019s master plan. However, there were still a lot of questions about the project.<\/p>\n \u201cA data center is functionally different from a warehouse, even where both may occur within an industrial setting,\u201d Seitz wrote. \u201cA warehouse is typically defined by goods movement, truck activity, and employee parking demand, whereas a data center is defined more by electrical infrastructure, cooling systems, backup generation, security, and utility demand.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of those differences, the change in use should be reviewed not only as a physical site revision, but also as a shift in operational characteristics and impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n The letter said the LVPC is unable to fully assess \u201cseveral aspects of the proposal that are relevant to Future LV\u201d and they should either be clarified or provided by the applicant.<\/p>\n Among the issues that need to be addressed, it said:<\/p>\n \u2022 Who would provide water service and how much would be needed for the proposed cooling system?<\/p>\n \u2022 Who would provide sewer service and would there be process-related wastewater?<\/p>\n \u2022 What would be the electrical demand?<\/p>\n \u2022 What is the cooling system design?<\/p>\n \u2022 Details on the generators and any outdoor equipment.<\/p>\n \u2022 Analysis for traffic, noise and emergency response coordination.<\/p>\n \u201cThe LVPC strongly recommends the township further refine its zoning ordinance definitions and regulations beyond this project review to clarify how data centers and similar land uses are classified under the zoning ordinance and ensure ordinance standards adequately address distinct impacts of emerging and evolving land uses,\u201d Seitz wrote.<\/p>\n Also on the agenda, the committee will review proposed data center ordinances from Allentown, Moore Township, Lower Nazareth Township and Lower Macungie Township.<\/p>\n In recent months, the LVPC reviewed data center plans for Upper Macungie<\/a> and South Whitehall<\/a> townships that have brought pushback from the community.<\/p>\n Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet another data center plan has been received by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. This one is for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[10565,153,155,154,2376,60,157,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-170949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allen-township","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170949","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=170949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}