Plans to develop Pennhurst into a data center move forward as township scraps ordinance

A data center planned for the Pennhurst State School and Hospital site will move forward in a months-long, multistep process, after East Vincent Township’s board of supervisors scrapped a draft ordinance seeking to impose restrictions on data-center construction.

At a crowded meeting Wednesday night — which at one point had residents yelling and prompted officials to call for a break — the board declined to move forward with the draft ordinance it had been penning for months that would govern data center development in the township. The draft ordinance came after the owner of the 125-acre historic Pennhurst site, which currently serves as a popular Halloween attraction, submitted a sketch to develop the land as a data center complex.

The application will now move forward, coming before the township’s planning commission over the next several months, before it eventually returns to the board of supervisors for a conditional use hearing, which is slated for March.

“I understand it’s a very emotional issue,” the board’s chairman Craig Damon told residents. “I have to keep an open mind through all of this, so I don’t stand on one side or another, because I have to keep an open mind to this.

Data centers are buildings or campuses that handle cloud-storage and computing needs of massive corporations, like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta. They require large-scale ways of cooling computing equipment and are often dependent on water to do that.

The potential data center in East Vincent would add to the more than 150 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration has encouraged data centers to locate in the state and has developed a “fast track” program for permitting. Recently, the governor’s office announced Amazon would spend $20 billion to develop data centers and other AI campuses across the commonwealth.

But data centers face a cooler reception from residents, with 42% of Pennsylvania residents saying they’d oppose data centers being built in their area, according to a new survey.

East Vincent officials had sought to impose restrictions on data centers by limiting building heights, mandating buffers, requiring lighting, limiting the amount of trees that can be cut down, and other restrictions. No one representing land owner Pennhurst Holdings LLC spoke Wednesday, but at a Dec. 3 meeting, an attorney for Pennhurst Holdings told officials the proposed ordinance had conditions that “appear reasonable and necessary on their face, but the struggle we have is when you put all of those together, they ultimately act as prohibitive to the development of the Pennhurst property as currently drafted.”

On Wednesday, the officials declined to move forward with the ordinance, after the township’s solicitor warned it could lead to a challenge.

Even with the ordinance shelved, residents in East Vincent and neighboring municipalities decried the prospective data center.

The sketch plan totals more than 1.3 million square feet, with five, two-story data center buildings, a sixth building, an electrical substation, and a solar field. Pennhurst State School and Hospital — or Pennhurst Asylum, in its Halloween capacity — opened in 1908 for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It closed in 1987, after legal challenges to its abusive and neglectful treatment of those who lived there, until it was turned into a Halloween attraction in 2008.

The property is situated near the Schuylkill River, and borders Spring City, which sits to the south. It is close to the Southeastern Veterans Center.

“These centers, as they’ve been built, have been nothing but trouble for the neighborhood,” said Tim Thorton, a Spring City resident who was handing out “No Pennhurst Data Center” yard signs to attendees. “They make noise, they use water. This thing would have to have its own generator.”

Residents pressed their concerns about noise, pollution, and exhausting resources like electricity and water. Veterans worried what the center would do to their health, and their quality of life in what is supposed to be a quiet, peaceful center.

“Would you want a data center in your neighborhood? Would you want a data center 500 feet from where you live?” one veteran, John J. Coyle, pressed the board.

Jason Cary, a union representative for a local electricians, said members were scared to speak publicly in support of the center.

“While I think your township is beautiful, to stop a project like this stops high-paying construction jobs coming to the area,” he said, drawing an immediate negative response from the crowd, with people yelling at him to “go away” and “get out.”

The township’s planning commission will now weigh the application, and will make its recommendation to the board of supervisors. Conditional use hearings will be slated for early next year, an attorney for the township said.

In nearby East Coventry, the planning commission last week rejected a bid to amend the zoning code to build a data center on Route 724, sending it to the township’s board of supervisors for review, The Mercury reported last week. The planning commission said it could tee up a legal challenge.

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