ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A data center project in South Allentown will not be reviewed by city officials next week.<\/p>\n
The planning commission was due to look at a proposal for a 247,000-square-foot facility at 2401 W. Emaus Ave., but the applicant \u2014 Zach Jordan of Langan Engineering \u2014 requested the meeting be postponed, according to the agenda for the body\u2019s meeting Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Data centers dominated discussion for more than three hours as Allentown City Council held a public hearing on proposed regulations before voting hours later to table them.<\/p>\n
That request came after dozens at a public hearing Wednesday night in City Hall spoke out against the proposal and in support of stronger regulations for data centers.<\/p>\n
‘Disney villain-level’ optics<\/p>\n
Lester Wenger voiced concerns about residents being priced out by the proposed facility\u2019s potential electricity consumption and said he believes it\u2019s \u201cno coincidence\u201d that a power substation is located on an adjacent lot.<\/p>\n
Wenger lives within a half-mile of the proposed data center, which he said would be \u201cneither productive nor prudent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Emaus Avenue data center proposal has \u201cDisney villain-level\u201d optics, Julie Vitale said, as the property sits across the street from an apartment complex and Camelot for Children, a nonprofit serving children with special needs and medical complexities. <\/p>\n
A data center opening there would create an \u201cimpossibly miserable situation,\u201d Vitale said.<\/p>\n
Mark Miller, a board member at Camelot for Children, urged council to do “whatever you can to protect the children, the families [and] volunteers of a 40-year community institution.” <\/p>\n
The proposal is expected to be on the agenda for the planning commission\u2019s July 14 meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A data center project in South Allentown will not be reviewed by city officials next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,91693,121,120,283,91694,91794],"class_list":["post-211894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-data-center","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-planning","tag-allentown-zoning","tag-lehigh-valley-data-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211894","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=211894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}