A developer filed back-to-back lawsuits against Jessup last month to build six data centers along Breaker Street and to bypass borough height restrictions for another data center on Sunnyside Road.\n<\/p>\n
Breaker Street Associates LLC and Sunnyside Road Associates LLC turned to the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas with consecutive filings June 18 regarding plans for a combined seven data centers, including one for which Jessup Borough Council conditionally approved<\/a> preliminary plans in June.\n<\/p>\n Both limited liability companies use the address One Tower Bridge, 100 Front St., Suite 560, West Conshohocken, which is the same address as Catalyst Commercial Development LLC. Catalyst\u2019s website still lists its previous plans for a 334,800-square-foot warehouse on Sunnyside Road near Alberigi Drive next to the Lackawanna Energy Center power plant.\n<\/p>\n Sunnyside Road Associates subsequently shifted those plans last year from a warehouse to a 487,000-square-foot data center.\n<\/p>\n The Breaker Street Associates project proposes six data centers across about 210 acres along Breaker Street, with an entrance on Hill Street. The data centers would be on the south side of Breaker Street.<\/p>\n Both projects faced denials from Jessup\u2019s zoning hearing board, though for different reasons.<\/p>\n The zoning hearing board denied Breaker Street\u2019s zoning application in December because of the location of electric infrastructure in its plans.\n<\/p>\n Jessup\u2019s zoners denied a height variance for the Sunnyside Road data center on April 28, rejecting the developer\u2019s request for a 70-foot-tall data center.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Despite that denial, Sunnyside Road still moved forward with the land development process for a 50-foot-tall data center, receiving conditional approval from borough council on June 3 for its preliminary land development plan.\n<\/p>\n Attorneys Richard M. Williams and Kevin M. Walsh Jr. of Kingston-based Hourigan, Kluger & Quinn PC filed both lawsuits.\n<\/p>\n Breaker Street<\/p>\n Breaker Street Associates filed an appeal and mandamus complaint against Jessup Borough Council on June 18 over what it alleges was a failure to issue valid written decisions within 90 days of its land development submissions for its data centers.<\/p>\n Attorneys representing the project previously filed<\/a> a land-use appeal on Jan. 29 challenging a zoning hearing board denial<\/a>\u00a0due to a switchyard\/substation falling into a residential zone.<\/p>\n The developer applied for the Breaker Street campus before Jessup council adopted a zoning amendment Aug. 19, which it reamended Nov. 5, that defined and regulated data centers while restricting them as conditional uses south of the Casey Highway in light industrial\/business park and general industrial zones encompassing the Valley View Business Park and the land surrounding the Lackawanna Energy Center.\n<\/p>\n Jessup\u2019s previous zoning allowed data centers in multiple zones, including the mixed-use zoning district covering the undeveloped land south of Breaker Street. While the data center buildings themselves were allowed in the zoning district, the necessary electric infrastructure fell into more restrictive medium-density residentially zoned land north of Breaker Street, requiring zoning relief.<\/p>\n The board ruled that the infrastructure is not an accessory use in the residential district, instead requiring it to be built on land zoned for data centers.<\/p>\n The developer disagreed, arguing that land for utility structures and data centers is a permitted use and exempt from local zoning; or, alternatively, that it still wants a special exception for utility structures and improvements associated with its proposed data center as a \u201cpublic utility facility.\u201d<\/p>\n The new filing focuses on a land development plan Breaker Street submitted on June 11, 2025, and then revised and resubmitted the following month in response to comments from the Lackawanna County Regional Planning Commission.\n<\/p>\n Following its initial submission, Breaker Street received a letter from Jessup Planning Commission Chairwoman Brittani Hamer Barscheski, who said the commission would not accept the application and plans because of a land use not permitted in the residential zone, referring to the electric infrastructure.<\/p>\n Williams and Walsh argue in their lawsuit that the initial denial letter was not valid because it needs to be decided by the zoning officer; that Jessup and Pennsylvania laws do not require zoning approval prior to submitting a land development application; and that the denial letter failed to cite specific provisions, among other contentions.<\/p>\n The attorneys further contend the borough never rendered any decision on the revised July 22 application, exceeding the 90-day window to do so.<\/p>\n As a result, Breaker Street Associates wants the court to compel Jessup council to approve its application and resubmitted plans, and pay for its costs and attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n Sunnyside Road<\/p>\n Sunnyside Road Associates argues in its land-use appeal that the Jessup Zoning Hearing Board abused its discretion by denying a 20-foot variance that would\u2019ve allowed it to build a 70-foot-tall data center.\n<\/p>\n Jessup limits the height of developments in the zoning district to 50 feet.<\/p>\n The proposed height is the industry standard, and characteristics of the property require a height increase, according to the appeal.<\/p>\n Williams and Walsh point out in their filing that the data center would be on a 48-acre parcel in an industrial park surrounded by industrial\/commercial uses with taller transmission lines and towers, as well as a taller natural gas power plant. The height will not affect the public interest in any way, the attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n As a result, the appeal asks the court to reverse the zoning hearing board\u2019s denial.<\/p>\n Jessup Solicitor Maura Armezzani Tunis and zoning hearing board Solicitor Mario Hanyon declined to comment Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A developer filed back-to-back lawsuits against Jessup last month to build six data centers along Breaker Street and…\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-242333","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\/242333","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=242333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242333\/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=242333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}