ALLEN TWP., Pa.- The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission (LVPC) has a lot of questions about a proposal for a data center that is advancing in Allen Township, Northampton County.<\/p>\n
Amended preliminary\/final land development plans to turn an existing warehouse into a data center received unanimous approval from the township’s board of supervisors last month. Those plans were discussed Tuesday\u00a0during a meeting of LVPC’s comprehensive planning committee.<\/p>\n
Prologis owns the one-million square-foot warehouse\u00a0at 2500 Liberty Drive. The site is just\u00a0west of Howertown Road, and about a half-mile east of the Allen Township boundary with Northampton Borough.<\/p>\n
In its draft review of the project, the LVPC noted that it last looked at land development plans for the site in 2015, when warehousing was the primary use. Now, in changing the proposed use to a data center, several tweaks have been made, including the addition of a substation and outdoor equipment areas, as well as a reduction in the parking areas.<\/p>\n
Planners said, in repurposing an existing industrial building within an established industrial area, the proposal supports a goal of the region’s comprehensive planning roadmap (FutureLV) to facilitate redevelopment and reinvestment within commercial areas where infrastructure and prior site disturbance already exist.<\/p>\n
“Reuse of an existing building can reduce pressure to convert farmland or other undeveloped land elsewhere in the region and avoids many of the land consumption impacts associated with new greenfield development,”\u00a0Chief Community and Regional Planner Jill Seitz wrote in the review.<\/p>\n
And yet, the LVPC was unable to fully assess many other aspects of the proposal as they relate to FutureLV because of a lack of information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Planners are seeking clarification in a number of areas, including:<\/p>\n
– Water service; who will provide it, and how much water will be used by the data center<\/p>\n
– Lighting plans, including hours of operation of the site<\/p>\n
– The total projected electrical demand at buildout, whether the proposed substation is dedicated to the site, and whether there is available capacity\u00a0<\/p>\n
– A noise analysis that includes the expected output from cooling equipment, transformers and generators<\/p>\n
– An emergency response coordination plan with fire responders<\/p>\n
Planners also asked questions about the expected number of employees per shift; previously, Prologis officials told Allen Township supervisors that, while the warehouse was approved to accommodate up to 900 vehicles per day, under the data center plan that number would drop to less than 100.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The comprehensive planning committee advanced the review to the full LVPC with little discussion. Commissioner Chris Amato did say, since the project could be the first hyperscale data center that comes to fruition in the Lehigh Valley, “it is so important that we do it right.”<\/p>\n
“The fact as we know them are by far outnumbered by the facts that we don’t know,” Amato added.<\/p>\n
Separately, the committee reviewed zoning ordinance amendments specific to data centers from four more municipalities: Allentown, Moore Township, Lower Nazareth Township and Lower Macungie Township.<\/p>\n
Those reviews were also sent to the full LVPC.<\/p>\n
The LVPC will meet virtually on Thursday, April 23 at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLEN TWP., Pa.- The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission (LVPC) has a lot of questions about a proposal for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[10565,153,155,154,2022],"class_list":["post-172231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allen-township","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-lehigh-valley-planning-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172231","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=172231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}