Planning for development is notoriously local in Pennsylvania, but one of the largest and most contentious building proposals in the region is now heading into a county-run public input process.
Springdale Borough is one of around two dozen municipalities in Allegheny County that do not have ordinances establishing their jurisdiction over subdivision and land use decisions. Instead, the county carries out the process.
Over the next two weeks, Allegheny County Economic Development’s (ACED) Planning Division will hold public meetings as part of this process for the proposed development of a data center campus, which has drawn opposition from residents of the borough and the surrounding community due to concerns over noise, air pollution and transparency from the developer Allegheny DC Propco LLC.
The first meeting, which will be held virtually tonight, has even drawn a watch party organized by Save Allegheny Valley Environment (SAVE).
SAVE Treasurer Marty Garrigan said that group has been educating residents on the process dictated by the county’s SALDO, or Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance. For Garrigan, the preferred outcome would be a denial.
“We’re hopeful. In the worst case scenario, they would approve this with conditions. But that’s a scary thought, too,” he said.
Anna Jewart, who serves as land use counsel for Allegheny DC Propco LLC, which recently rebranded as Dynamo DC, said that the SALDO process for major developments can be broken down into three steps: zoning approval at the local level, approval of the preliminary land development plan and final approval of the plan.
The developer is on the second step. The ACED Planning Division has 90 days from its Oct. 28 meeting at Springdale Borough Municipal Building to issue its decision, she said. The county will accept written comments through Nov. 30.
A preliminary approval would not allow Allegheny DC Propco to start building any structures or complete any grading work, she said. But because the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development Standards now require local approvals to be complete before data center developers apply for Department of Environmental Protection permits, Jewart said an approved preliminary plan would allow Allegheny DC Propco to apply for those.
“This is a big hurdle. And it takes a lot of work, a lot of engineering. But there is much more that has to be done still,” she said.
One application, dozens of issues
Last December, Allegheny DC Propco received approval from Springdale Borough Council to build the data center complex as a conditional use. The borough also granted the developer six variances.
Lessons of Springdale: Towns must prepare if they want any say over data centers
At the municipal level, the preliminary plan submitted as part of the SALDO process typically provides a broad overview of what’s being proposed, said Brigitte Meyer, a staff attorney for the environmental advocacy organization PennFuture. But that also depends on the town’s zoning ordinance and the level of detail it requires.
The county’s SALDO requires preliminary applications to include a range of documents, including a description of the project and its purpose and maps of the development’s proposed location and surrounding developments. Depending on a site’s conditions, a developer might also have to submit reports that assess soil contamination, landslide proneness and subsidence risk.
Allegheny DC Propco’s preliminary plan proposes transforming 47 acres of the former Cheswick Generating Station site into a data center campus that would include power generators, utility yards and stormwater facilities to support its operations.
In response to the 182-page application, ACED’s Planning Division asked for correction of several inconsistencies. Some of those issues include:
- Certification from the Allegheny County Health Department that it was notified about the proposal, as required, wasn’t included in the application. Notification to the Health Department would also trigger air pollution requirements for the facility, according to the county’s review.
- Several concerns surrounding the application’s treatment of the St. Mark’s Lutheran Church cemetery, which sits to the west of the proposed data center campus. The review notes that there’s a call to move earth in proximity to existing headstones there, and a proposal to relocate access to the cemetery would require building a bridge.
- Despite the plan showing that parts of the site are contaminated with methylnaphthalene and arsenic, the application did not signal that any remediation had been done.
Two consultants — Mackin Engineers and Consultants and GFT Infrastructure, Inc. — also conducted reviews of the plan on behalf of the county and borough. Similar to the county’s internal review, the third parties took issue with missing or incomplete information throughout the plan.
Jewart, counsel for the developer, said that the length of the county’s review was not surprising for a plan of this size. She also said that it’s standard for these reviews to include several reminders to obtain certain permits, some of which she said the developer cannot apply for at this time due to the state’s GRID Standards.
Allegheny DC Propco has submitted a letter in response to the county’s review, she said, and plans to submit an updated plan ahead of the Oct. 28 meeting.
In June, county Sustainability Director Brittany Prischak said the county is working on a model data center development ordinance that municipalities can adopt, but that the county was still figuring out its role in the evolving space.
Harrisburg also has a role. According to the state’s data center permit tracker, the developer already has state water obstruction and encroachment permits, but still has to submit permit applications related to erosion control and brownfield cleanups.
Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at mia@publicsource.org.
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