“It’s ridiculous,” said Parks, referring to letter with the $10,000 offer. “They are trying to drive a wedge between Hazle Township residents who are directly affected by the data center, like myself, and people who might live a couple of miles away.”<\/p>\n
Negra, who like Parks lives in the sprawling Eagle Rock Resort community<\/a> that is adjacent to the site, said, “Sounds like a bribe to me.”<\/p>\n Shapiro went to Luzerne County in late 2024 to publicly announce the Pennsylvania Permit Fast Track Program, intended to streamline permit-issuing for high-impact economic development and infrastructure projects. As of Friday, nine of the 17 projects shown on the state’s public Fast Track “dashboard” were data centers.<\/p>\n Concern about data center development has mushroomed in the state Legislature, although no comprehensive plan to regulate it has cleared both the House qnd Senate.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Democratic Rep. Kyle Mullins of Lackawanna County described the data center frenzy in the state as an irresponsible and speculative “gold rush.”<\/a> And recently, Republican Rep. Jamie Walsh of Luzerne County said he would be investigating numerous real estate transactions<\/a> carried out in Salem Township in that county, tied to data center proposals.<\/p>\n Hazle Township, with slightly more than 10,000 residents, surrounds the city of Hazleton and straddles Interstate 81 about 80 miles north of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n NorthPoint Development, a privately held real estate development firm that is based in Kansas City and is behind the Hazelnut proposal, took part in Shapiro’s late-2024 announcement.<\/p>\n A year later, though, following many complaints from residents, township supervisors voted unanimously to reject a land application from NorthPoint tied to the project. Last month, a Luzerne County judge denied an appeal filed by NorthPoint.<\/p>\n The recent letter signed by Nathaniel Hagedorn, NorthPoint CEO and founder, began arriving in local mailboxes about a week ago. It referred to “misinformation and fear that has circulated about data centers and our project” and sought to alleviate concerns about water, the environment, setbacks, light and power.<\/p>\n It also listed potential community benefits like a $105 million payout over 15 years for township initiatives like forming a police department and reducing trash fees.<\/p>\n Most eye-catching for individual homeowners, though, was the description of a “$45 million direct resident grant fund.” It said the grants would be available to each household in the township and could be spent on anything.<\/p>\n “This $10,000 will be paid to each household on the issuance of the certificate of occupancy of our first data center building,” the letter from Hagedorn said.<\/p>\n On Friday, a spokesperson for NorthPoint said letters were sent to all Hazle Township households, a total of more than 4,000.<\/p>\n “The letters are just starting to land in mailboxes, so we have not heard from many residents yet,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Ed Parks and Annmarie Palumbo-Parks at their home in northeastern Pennsylvania holding a letter from a data center developer offering $10,000 to local households if the project is built.\u00a0Photo: Ford Turner \/ The Center Square<\/p>\n Both Negra and Parks live in Eagle Rock with their wives and both were harshly critical of the letter.<\/p>\n “They can’t just throw their money around and think they can go where ever they want, disrupting people’s quality of life,” said Negra, a retired building materials manager for a contracting company. He described the attempted start of the project as sneaky.<\/p>\n “When people have to resort to bribing people to get something passed, that’s what it is. That’s pretty poor that that has to happen,” Negra said.<\/p>\n Parks and his wife, Annmarie Palumbo-Parks, live near Negra in a somewhat remote and wooded part of Eagle Rock.<\/p>\n Palumbo-Parks said people in the well-established community volunteer and donate money for causes in nearby Hazleton. Living in the beautiful, wooded area, for many, is the payoff after a lifetime of work and planning.<\/p>\n “How can you put a price on your well-being?” she said.<\/p>\n Her husband, a retired software company vice president, was blunt.<\/p>\n “They are trying to bribe people,” Ed Parks said. “They are being very disingenuous in this letter. Plus, it is not a contract.”<\/p>\n He, too, believes the start of the project seemed shrouded in secrecy at the local level.<\/p>\n He said, “It should never have been fast-tracked.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) – An unsolicited letter from a data center developer that dangles $10,000 for every household…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-229072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-economy","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229072","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=229072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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