This summer has brought a flurry of activity from municipalities across the Poconos as they adopt new zoning ordinances to prepare for potential data center development. You can learn more about data centers here.  

The Poconos’ recent experience with rapid warehouse/distribution center growth has taught the region the importance of getting zoning ordinances on the books to address this next wave of highly-impactful development. Ordinances give municipalities the power to control where data center development occurs and under what conditions. Without them, municipalities lose this control. That is especially true in Pennsylvania because our Supreme Court has held that the Pennsylvania constitution requires every municipality to allow for every legitimate land use somewhere within its borders. This means municipalities do not have the option of saying “no thank you” to data centers, and a municipality that fails to address data centers in its zoning ordinance runs the risk of a data center developer bringing a legal challenge against the ordinance. If the developer wins that challenge, they must be allowed to develop wherever they please. Municipalities whose ordinances do not allow for data centers remain vulnerable to these challenges up to the moment they formally announce their intention to adopt an ordinance to “cure” the exclusion. 

One township that learned this the hard way is Clifton Township, Lackawanna County. This spring, the township learned of a developer’s desire to build a 17-building data center campus on approximately 500 acres in the township, along with another 500 acres in neighboring Covington Township. Much of this property is located in a residential zoning district, and nearly all of it contains uncut forest and Exceptional Value streams and wetlands. Clifton Township’s existing zoning ordinance did not address data centers, so the township quickly drafted an amendment that would limit data centers to its Industrial District and impose commonsense restrictions on them. However, mere hours before the township publicly announced its intention to adopt this ordinance, the data center developer submitted a legal challenge to the existing ordinance. By doing so, the developer “beat the clock,” and Clifton Township now must defend against the challenge. If it loses, it must allow the data center developer to build in the residential zone, regardless of what the new ordinance says.  

Clifton Township’s experience can serve as a warning to all Pennsylvania municipalities—do not wait until a developer is at your door to update your zoning ordinance. Decide NOW how your municipality should regulate these uses if and when they come knocking. PennFuture commends the municipalities in the Poconos that have done just that, including Coolbaugh, Jackson, Chestnuthill, Polk, Clifton, and Covington Townships, and other townships like Kidder, Tobyhanna, and Smithfield that are quickly working toward doing the same.  

As several of these municipalities have acknowledged, their first efforts at data center regulation may not be perfect. Data centers are new uses for most Pennsylvania municipalities, and technological innovations are occurring at a rapid pace. It is very likely that the ordinances adopted this summer will need to be revised and amended in the future as we learn more about how this development will take shape in Pennsylvania. But, municipalities should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. An imperfect ordinance is better than no ordinance at all! 

And municipalities do not have to go at it alone! PennFuture is here to help! Our model data center ordinance and video series can help municipalities get up to speed and take action quickly to ensure data center growth is appropriately regulated. We’ve done the leg work necessary to produce a thorough and considerate ordinance, reviewing ordinances from PA and other states, considering the impacts of this type of land use, and ensuring sufficient local authority over where this new land use should go. Check them out today!