One Slate Belt Township is considering amending its zoning ordinance in anticipation of a major data center coming to town.
Upper Mount Bethel Township supervisors voted Monday to authorize advertising a zoning text amendment to add data centers and data center campuses to its township zoning ordinance.
Supervisors said a company, which may be coming to the 800-acre River Pointe Logistics Center, suggested the wording for the text amendment.
Supervisors’ Chairman John Bermingham said a confidentially agreement prohibits him from disclosing the name of the company.
River Pointe developer Lou Pektor declined to comment on the company, citing similar confidentiality reasons.
Speculation at township meetings suggests the company is a major online retailer, though, no official source has confirmed that.
The township zoning officer determined in 2024 that data centers are a permitted use in the industrial zone where River Pointe is located, however, the current zoning ordinance does not list data centers specifically.
The text amendment would define a data center as “a building which is occupied primarily by computers and/or telecommunications and related equipment, including supporting equipment, where information is processed, transferred and/or stored. A data center may include data center equipment.”
A data center campus is defined in the text amendment as “an integrated development of multiple data centers that may include data center accessory uses/structures and data center equipment.”
Other large data centers like the one speculated about in Upper Mount Bethel Township exist in Pennsylvania. In March 2024, Talen Energy announced the sale of its Cumulus Data Center in Salem Township, Luzerne County, to Amazon Web Services for $650 million.
Salem Township amended it zoning ordinance in May 2024 to create an industrial zoning district that enabled Amazon to build the data center there, according to a report in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice.
Upper Mount Bethel Township supervisors still need to conduct a public hearing and vote on whether to accept the new zoning text amendment, which would be applicable to new development in the township.
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