A proposed data center campus in Newton Twp. will be the subject of an appeal hearing later this month.
Land owner Popca LLC, whose address is 427 Main St., Archbald, wants to build a two-building campus. Mark Gawron, the former property owner, is listed as the contact name for the LLC, according to a zoning application he filed on Jan. 21 with the township.
The approximately 90-acre property is on Newton Road and known as the East Newton Ira Tripp Tract, according to Lackawanna County property records.
On Feb. 19, Newton’s Zoning Officer D. Scot Haan denied Gawron’s application. Haan said in his denial that the proposed use is not an allowed use within Newton Twp. The property is in Newton’s rural resource zoning district.
The Archbald-based landowner filed an appeal on March 23.
The Newton Twp. Zoning Hearing Board will hear Gawron’s appeal on April 27 at 7 p.m. in the municipal building, 1528 Newton Ransom Blvd., Clarks Summit.
Project details, appeal in focus
According to the application, the two buildings would each be 35-feet tall and take up 145,200 square feet — or three acres. Plans for the campus also include two generation yards, a well, septic system, substation, guard building and two stormwater management facilities.
In the application to the township, Gawron estimates the project would cost $280 million.
“The determination of the zoning officer is erroneous as a matter of law and constitutes an improper determination and application of the Newton Twp. Zoning Ordinance,” Wilkes-Barre lawyers Vinsko & Associates argue for Gawron in their appeal.
They continue to say that the use falls under Newton’s commercial, institutional, utility-related or light industrial uses. In the appeal, they say Haan failed to properly interpret the ordinance and that the township is excluding data centers.
In Pennsylvania, municipalities must zone for every possible use.
Close proximity to another data center proposal
Gawron’s property is less than a mile north of Scranton Materials LLC, which plans to construct a six-building center campus at its stone quarry at 819 Newton Road, Ransom Twp. That property borders the city of Scranton. Each building would measure 214 feet by 732 feet — around 3.5 acres or just over 2.5 football fields each — and 120 feet tall.
In January during a packed zoning hearing, Ransom Twp. supervisors denied a zoning amendment requested by the business’s lawyers which would add a data center zoning overlay to the property for the campus.
The denial came after Attorney Laura Magnotta, representing her mother, a Scranton resident, argued that the lawyers for the Meshoppen-based LLC could not authenticate exhibits, presented no witnesses and provided no information to people with party status ahead of the meeting.
Attorney Michael Mey, from Mey and Sulla in Dunmore, appealed that decision in March and is asking the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas for site-specific relief. Magnotta filed a petition to intervene in the land use appeal.
There are also six data center campuses proposed in Archbald; one in Clifton and Covington townships; and one in Dickson City.
What’s next
The Newton Twp. Zoning Hearing Board will hear Gawron’s appeal on April 27 at 7 p.m. in the municipal building, 1528 Newton Ransom Blvd., Clarks Summit.
