{"id":263919,"date":"2026-08-12T12:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263919\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T12:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:56:07","slug":"first-of-two-meetings-on-upper-merion-data-center-plan-to-be-held-nbc10-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263919\/","title":{"rendered":"First of two meetings on Upper Merion data center plan to be held \u2013 NBC10 Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upper Merion residents will have a chance, on Wednesday night, to provide input on plans for massive data centers that could be built in the community. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday evening the Upper Merion Planning Commission will hold a hearing on plans for a 1,677,800 square foot data center proposed along Swedeland Road and a 450,000 square foot data center plan for River Road. <\/p>\n

It will be the first of two meetings set for this week to talk about the project. <\/p>\n

The overall proposal — from Brian O\u2019Neill of MLP Ventures<\/a> — calls for eight data centers in the neighborhood and would take over a total floor plan of 4.6 million feet.<\/p>\n

That’s an area larger than the entire Philadelphia International Airport. <\/p>\n

Previous meetings on the plan have proved contentious as over 8,000 people signed a petition opposing the plan. <\/p>\n

At a meeting in May<\/a>, residents expressed concerns about the data centers’ impact on the community and the environment. <\/p>\n

\u201cI do think they want us to leave. I think that it\u2019s almost a filibuster where they are over explaining and just giving a bunch of non answers,\u201d Upper Merion resident Chloe Dashner said at that time. \u201cThey are not doing any research about how this going to affect us physically.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfathomable how big some of these facilities are. The noise pollution, the heat that is all going to cause,\u201d Upper Merion resident Vincent Barrett told NBC10 at that meeting.<\/p>\n

In the past, O\u2019Neill has defended the plan, arguing it would comply with regulations and would not negatively impact the environment through noise or water use. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have done for over 30 years in everything we’ve done is to build properties sensibly, and do the right thing always. We will not deviate from those standards,\u201d O\u2019Neill told NBC10’s Deanna Durante<\/a>. \u201cThe beauty of these data centers is they don’t create traffic, they don\u2019t make noise. If you comply, and we intend to comply. They don\u2019t pollute. If you comply, we intend to comply.”<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s planning commission hearing will be held at Upper Merion Middle School, located at 450 Keebler Road in King of Prussia at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

A second hearing on other elements of the data center plan will be held on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, also at 7 p.m. at Upper Merion Middle School. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upper Merion residents will have a chance, on Wednesday night, to provide input on plans for massive data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[200,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-263919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-montgomery-county","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263919","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=263919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}