The first of several zoning board meetings took place last week regarding a proposed 2-million-square-foot data center in Connaughtown, a small neighborhood in Plymouth Township that borders Conshohocken.
After a proposal was withdrawn in the fall, a new application was submitted to consider a zoning exemption that would allow the existing buildings to be converted into a hyperscale data center. The proposal from developer Brian O’Neill’s MLP Ventures is for the site at the former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill at 900 Conshohocken Road, which closed last summer. This site is less than a mile from downtown Conshohocken and across from dozens of homes in Connaughtown.
On Thursday, June 25, the application was brought before the Plymouth Township Zoning Board and faced heavy opposition from community members and business owners alike.
Local activists and community leaders, including former municipal chair and Plymouth Township committee person Ardis Lukens, dropped weekly communications in neighbors’ mailboxes and organized several meetings and peaceful demonstrations leading up to Thursday’s meeting.
The goal? To show unity and encourage community members to voice their concerns to the zoning board in hopes that the proposed data center would not be approved. A contingent sale of the property to O’Neill is currently in place.
“By the community being there, by everyone being there for that first zoning meeting, it says we mean business,” Lukens told Metro. “The idea is that the community engages, they stay engaged, and that the township and everyone realizes we are not messing around here.”
Health, environment concerns
A demonstration took place the day prior, along Elm Street/Conshohocken Road, leading up to the old steel mill. When speaking with neighbors, the concerns were mostly the same — a focus on health and well-being.
Air, noise, water and light pollution are also major issues for people who oppose the data center, especially those who live directly across the street from the site.
“My concern is this cumulative effect along the Schuylkill River and along these waterways,” Lukens said. “We are just going back to the 50s and 60s, where we just polluted the crap out of everything, and it took years to bring it back. Why are we going backwards?”
For community leaders like Lukens, the importance goes beyond just this site. O’Neill has five proposed sites in neighboring Upper Merion Township’s King of Prussia and West Conshohocken communities totaling 4.6 million square feet, several of which are located almost directly across the Schuylkill River. There is concern that pollution from the power-plant-style smokestacks required to run these sites would create a dome effect, leading to combined pollutants in the air.
The Plymouth Township site is directly across the street from ‘The Proving Grounds,’ a multi-sport athletic center that hosts youth tournaments year-round, driving millions of dollars of revenue for the township.
O’Neill has claimed, when defending his application for all proposed sites in the region, that there will be massive tax revenue for the counties where these are built. However, at the most recent planning meeting for the Upper Merion sites, Upper Merion Tax Collector Evelyn Ankers said during the public comment section that businesses tied to the developer had not paid taxes on time, drawing loud applause from the audience.
“With all due respect, I think the best way to increase property tax revenue in Upper Merion is to pay the taxes,” Ankers said, according to CBS Philadelphia,
Community pushback
Neighbors who wished to remain anonymous told Metro they feel it is counterintuitive to build something so disruptive, literally across the street from such a positive thing for youth in the area.
Thursday’s meeting was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m, but community members began lining the aisles of Colonial Middle School an hour prior.
As members of the community arrived, they were greeted by organizers handing out informational pamphlets, stickers, and demonstrations, including a song describing some of the potential side effects of living near data centers playing loudly from a speaker.
The most impactful demonstration, according to several people in attendance, was a diesel truck running with a sign that states “Back-up diesel generators will consume as much diesel and produce as much exhaust as 21,000 trucks all idling at the same time!”
O’Neill did not attend the meeting; however, his lawyer was present.
In the original notice of the board meeting, the agenda included evidence presentations, with party response as time allows. That did not occur.
For the parts that did take place, the board explained that those in attendance would have an opportunity to make their case for ‘status’ in the case, meaning they could join the proceedings as a party and participate in questioning and cross-examination after evidence is presented.
16 of 17 applications for status were approved based on those parties being “personally aggrieved,” as the board members explained.
One community member whose status was approved during the meeting, Nick Liermann, requested time to speak before the meeting adjourned to express frustrations with the process thus far. Liermann, who is a legal consultant, echoed those sentiments to Metro.
“The concern is, what you have on one side are regular community members with no expertise and no resources. On the other side, you have a developer who’s been doing this for a very long time that has literally billions of dollars of assets and attorneys at his disposal,” Liermann said. “And what the zoning hearing board has created is a situation where they are going to present expert testimony, but we have no idea what they’re going to say, who they are, or what their opinions are based on. And we have been told that we have to be prepared to effectively cross-examine experts in the field with no information on which to prepare.”
Liermann requested that advance notice and information be provided to all parties with status in the proceedings. When the board responded saying that O’Neill and his party were not required to do so, the crowd of concerned citizens erupted in boos and chanted ‘shame, shame, shame,’ at board members.
“You don’t do trials by surprise, which is what they’re doing here. There’s already a massive mismatch in the power dynamic, and they have only magnified it with their decision,” Liermann said.
He also noted that when a new application is made, as is the case in Plymouth Township, a planning meeting should be scheduled before a meeting in front of the zoning board.
“They decided to skip over that entire planning meeting, which is where we as the community would be able to ask more questions and get more information,” Liermann said. “They’ve robbed us of that, because right now all we know is the very short application information that was provided.”
As post-meeting discussions were nearly finished, a concerned neighbor, who requested anonymity, told Metro he knows first-hand the environmental impact of massive data centers — because he works at one.
“The pollution concerns are real, and the new employment is minimal,” the contractor who works in a nearby data center said. “I didn’t care about data centers at all until I had to work there. There’s a hum all day and smoke all around when we walk into work. After seeing a post about this meeting, I had to come and support the fight.”
Next steps, growing opposition
The next meeting is scheduled for July 28, with another scheduled for July 30 should the earlier one run long.
One thing is for sure — local community leaders are ready for a long fight, and they want people in neighboring communities and in the city of Philadelphia to pay close attention.
“This is the largest data center that’s proposed for the region, and it’s within literally 200 feet of men, women, and children where they live every single day,” Liermann stated. “Everything about this comes up short, and the only people that are going to pay the consequences are the same people that live here.”
“If it can happen here, it can happen in your neighborhood,” Lukens said. “Don’t think that the golf course next to you that no one uses anymore [is safe]; it could turn into a data center.”
MORE: Pennsylvania communities are pushing back on data center proposals
Keywords
Plymouth Township,
Montgomery County,
Conshohocken,
Data Centers,
Zoning Board,
Community News,
Development,
Environment,
Brian O’Neill,
MLP Ventures