Jessup\u2019s council vice president urged residents not to panic after a split borough council conditionally approved preliminary plans Wednesday for a data center next to the Lackawanna Energy Center.\n<\/p>\n
Council voted 3-2 to approve West Conshohocken-based Sunnyside Road Associates\u2019 land development plan for a 50-foot-tall data center on Sunnyside Road near Alberigi Drive and adjacent to the natural gas power plant. The developer must meet five conditions\u00a0recommended by the Jessup and Lackawanna County planning commissions. Council must still vote on a final land development plan.<\/p>\n
Council Vice President Curt Camoni stressed Thursday that council\u2019s decision was not a \u201cgreen flag\u201d for the data center to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want anyone panicking \u2014 there\u2019s no reason to panic. There\u2019s no reason to be upset,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is an early step with many more steps and much more opportunity for the public to make their voices heard, and also, we will be receiving much, much more information before anything is voted on to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilmen Jerry Crinella, Tom Fiorelli and Ron Kordish voted to approve the preliminary plans Wednesday; Camoni and Councilman Robbie Martin dissented. Council President Gregg Betti was absent, and council accepted the resignation of former Councilman Jeff Castellani during Wednesday\u2019s meeting.\n<\/p>\n
Despite their differing votes, Crinella said every council member is concerned about the impact of data centers and the overall industrialization of the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery one of us wants to make sure that we\u2019re protecting the public,\u201d Crinella said.<\/p>\n
About Sunnyside<\/p>\n
Sunnyside Road Associates, 100 Front St., Suite 560, West Conshohocken, initially filed a land development application with Jessup in August, changing its plans from a 334,800-square-foot warehouse to a 487,000-square-foot data center. The West Conshohocken address corresponds with Catalyst Commercial Development LLC, whose website still includes a brochure<\/a> for the warehouse. The same developer is challenging<\/a> Jessup in county court as Breaker Street Associates LLC after the zoning hearing board denied its plans for six data centers along Breaker Street. The appeal, which Breaker Street Associates filed in February, is ongoing.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Sunnyside Road Associates applied with the borough before it adopted more stringent standards for data centers. This allows the company to operate under the borough\u2019s legacy zoning that did not define data centers but allowed them in other areas of town such as Breaker Street.<\/p>\n Because the Sunnyside Road data center falls into Jessup\u2019s general industrial zoning district, restrictions apply, such as a 50-foot height restriction Sunnyside tried to exceed. The developer sought a 40-foot variance to build a 90-foot-tall data center, before halving its request to a 20-foot variance to build up to 70 feet. The zoning hearing board denied the variance in April.\n<\/p>\n Council\u2019s decision<\/p>\n Camoni attributed his vote against the plans to missing information.<\/p>\n \u201cI look at every decision based on, \u2018Is this in the best interest of Jessup and its residents?\u2019 and when it comes to development and projects, resident quality of life is my top priority, and that\u2019s been a through line through all of this for council,\u201d Camoni said. \u201cThere\u2019s just no way to determine that with this project as of yet.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no end user, and the borough still has questions established as conditions, Camoni said.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say, \u2018Yes\u2019 to something and then just hope I get the information later, and I understand that the approval is conditioned on that,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce we have the information, bring it back and I\u2019ll think about voting on it, but I\u2019m not getting out ahead of the information. I can\u2019t look my neighbors in the eye and say, \u2018This is a good idea for Jessup,\u2019 and if I can\u2019t do that, I\u2019m not putting my name on it.\u201d<\/p>\n For Crinella, who was one of the three council members to vote in favor of the preliminary plans, the Sunnyside project is near the Lackawanna Energy Center in a spot that no one else really wants to develop.<\/p>\n \u201cVery few businesses would want to go in there,\u201d Crinella said. \u201cA data center in general is not a bad thing, as long as you have the proper governance around it.\u201d<\/p>\n Jessup wants to keep data centers above the Casey Highway and out of the center of town, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is in a very highly industrial area where it belongs, and \u2026 at least according to what they submitted so far, they\u2019re going to meet all of our ordinances and requirements and restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the Midvalley, which has become Northeast Pennsylvania\u2019s data center hot spot, residents have almost universally urged their local governments to restrict data centers to land on the opposite side of the Casey Highway from their communities.<\/p>\n Crinella believes approving data centers where they do belong gives Jessup a stronger legal defense against data centers proposed in areas where they don\u2019t belong.<\/p>\n Jessup has to allow for every type of land use, and if the developer is within zoning requirements and meets restrictions, there is no basis to reject the preliminary plans, he said.<\/p>\n Sunnyside Road Associates now has to develop detailed plans to submit to Jessup for its final land development approval, Crinella said. The plans will include information on noise levels, the numbers and types of backup generators and acoustic mitigation systems, he said.<\/p>\n If it falls out of compliance, Jessup still has the ability to reject the data center, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst and foremost, we want to make sure that the town is protected. We want to make sure that nobody is negatively impacted by this,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope the residents of the town understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n Developer must meet 5 conditions<\/p>\n By voting Wednesday, council followed a recommendation from the borough planning commission to approve Sunnyside\u2019s plans with conditions tied to them. Both the borough and Lackawanna County planning commissions signed off on the plans.<\/p>\n The conditions are:<\/p>\n \u2022 Provide the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection approvals for amendments to its stormwater control plans for a data center.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Provide approval for a signature block for the operation and maintenance of post-construction stormwater management plans.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Coordinate with DEP for an updated sewer usage plan for a data center.<\/p>\n \u2022 Provide updated will-serve letters related to all utility companies under a data center, such as Pennsylvania American Water, UGI Utilities and PPL Electric Utilities. Will-serve letters show the utility agrees to serve the data center.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Provide an updated traffic impact statement for a data center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessup\u2019s council vice president urged residents not to panic after a split borough council conditionally approved preliminary plans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2116,2119,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-210955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-data-centers","tag-jessup","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210955","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=210955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}