new guidelines in Bill 20<\/a> will not apply to the proposed project.<\/p>\nPlanning Director Jennifer Gomez said the city has been working on Bill 20 for months and that it had been endorsed by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.<\/p>\n
Managing Director Frank Kane said Bill 20 will strengthen the zoning code by creating a special exception designation for data centers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates an expanded setback, adds additional layers of safeguards that include an environmental review and hearing before the planning board, and places additional requirements on developers who seek to locate data centers in our city,\u201d Kane said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ordinance will permit data centers in the General-Industrial and Industrial Manufacturing zoning districts by way of a special exception, which requires a hearing before the zoning hearing board.<\/p>\n
The new regulations include definitions and\u00a0set the regulations on a variety of topics such as setback requirements from existing homes and businesses to how the centers must be sustained by existing infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Gerlach attempted to persuade council to table Bill 20 and instead adopt a curative amendment, which would\u00a0place a moratorium on new applications for data centers for a 180-day period, during which time the regulations in the bill could be strengthened.<\/p>\n
A municipal curative amendment can be made by a municipality to make a declaration that its zoning code is insufficient, and that it will be \u201ccured\u201d in six months.<\/p>\n
The deficiency in the zoning ordinance is that it does not address the use of data centers.<\/p>\n
A municipality is required to provide zoning districts for every potential use.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s legal counsel warned that a curative amendment would not prevent the city from receiving new data center applications and could make the city vulnerable since it would not have regulations for a six-month period.<\/p>\n
But that advice was not sufficient to convince the crowd, as most of the four hours were spent hearing public comment from residents who passionately wanted the curative amendment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of those who spoke did not acknowledge that the proposed 180-day moratorium would not affect the Emaus Avenue project.<\/p>\n
They also felt the bill was not strong enough, as it included two zoning districts where data centers could be located and that there is a required setback of only 200 feet from residential uses.<\/p>\n
Several of the speakers expressed anger in their comments and used obscene language to stress their points of view that they do not trust the administration or the city\u2019s planning commission.<\/p>\n
Before voting on the proposed curative amendment, Councilmember Cristian Pungo explained that he believes there was too much uncertainty surrounding it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t have a single perspective has been fully supported by all parties about the curative amendment, and I think there’s so much uncertainty behind it,\u201d Pungo said. \u201cIn trying to serve the people of Allentown, I don’t know that I can take that risk on a \u2018maybe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Pungo added that he wants to work diligently to vote to strengthen Bill 20 after passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not vote for the curative amendment and be happy with myself if something were to happen and it were to be challenged, and then all of a sudden data centers get free rein in Allentown,\u201d Pungo said. \u201cWhat is guaranteed is that if we pass Bill 20 tonight, we have something that requires zoning hearing board approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council voted the same 4-2 vote against the curative amendment.<\/p>\n
The other councilmembers who opposed the curative amendment said it was a very hard decision, but that they ultimately feared it would not protect the city from new data center applications.<\/p>\n
Council also canceled the regular July 1 meeting, but announced it will be working with the administration to come up with a date for a special meeting to begin the process of making amendments to Bill 20, such as expanding the required setbacks, to strengthen the regulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 After spending close to four hours hearing from a standing-room-only crowd, Allentown City Council voted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,2748,121,120,1609,14935,2750,39641,92176,65151,2997,2022,2743],"class_list":["post-222126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-city-council","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-candida-affa","tag-ce-ce-gerlach","tag-cristian-pungo","tag-data-center-applications","tag-frank-kane","tag-jennifer-gomez","tag-lehigh-valley-planning-commission","tag-natalie-santos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222126","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=222126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}