has filed a legal zoning appeal seeking to challenge the city\u2019s zoning decision, which has allowed the center to move forward in the city\u2019s review process.<\/a><\/p>\nQuantm LLC, a Philadelphia data center development company, submitted plans to convert a 224,000-square-foot warehouse building at 2401 W. Emmaus Ave. into a data center.<\/p>\n
The proposed data center is still awaiting a vote from the city\u2019s planning commission that would allow developers to begin construction, but the city late last year determined that a data center may be treated as a \u201cpermitted-by-right\u201d use in the I-3 zoning district, where the building is located.<\/p>\n
Because the city\u2019s zoning ordinance, at the time, did not account for data centers, the city is tasked with determining the most \u201cclosely allied use,\u201d which it determined is manufacturing. Manufacturing buildings are permitted by right in the I-3 zoning district, according to the letter, and therefore data centers may also be built by right in that district.<\/p>\n
However, in a formal legal appeal dated July 6, Kevin Fogerty, an attorney representing Camelot, argues that there is a \u201cgross disparity\u201d between data center and manufacturing uses, so the city\u2019s determination that a data center is allowed by right at 2401 W. Emmaus Ave. is inappropriate and incorrect.<\/p>\n
\u201cData centers do not remotely meet the definition of manufacturing as they do not treat or process raw products nor do they create articles or finished products from raw or prepared materials by giving them new forms or qualities,\u201d Fogerty wrote.<\/p>\n
Fogerty also cited the city\u2019s new data center ordinance as evidence that it does not consider manufacturing use to be similar to data centers.<\/p>\n
The hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday in City Hall.<\/p>\n
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allentown\u2019s zoning hearing board this week will consider whether or not the city erred in declaring data centers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,153,155,154,3069,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-275718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-data-center","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275718","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=275718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}