A cleaned-up Superfund site in Chester County could become home to a massive data center

A Chester County developer is planning to build a data center approaching the size of the retail space at King of Prussia Mall that could consume more power in one location than any other Peco customer.

Charles Lyddane said he hopes to begin construction this year on the two million-square-foot facility on 65 acres of a remediated Superfund site he owns in East Whiteland Township.

“This will be a major economic engine for Chester County and for Pennsylvania,” said Lyddane, whose company Green Fig Land LLC is partnering with Fifteen Forty Seven Critical Systems Realty of Matawan, N.J., to develop the East Whiteland site.

A pair of two-story structures costing as much as $300 million each to build would house as much as $6 billion in technology to provide data storage, processing, and distribution services to commercial and institutional customers.

East Whiteland approved zoning variances that Lyddane requested for the project in 2021, and he plans to submit a land development plan to the township this spring. If the plan is approved, construction would begin within six to 12 months and be finished by the end of 2024.

Lyddane said strong demand for new data center capacity is expected to continue despite current economic uncertainties.

Nevertheless, he has “put on hold” a proposal to build a 100,000-square-foot data center along with a power-generating facility on 25 acres he owns in West Whiteland Township that are contiguous with his East Whiteland property.

“Our only plan at this time is to build two data center buildings ... in East Whiteland Township,” Lyddane said Tuesday.

With utilities already in place and room to accommodate customers seeking expansive, build-to-suit space for their data operations, he said, the project also would encourage tech-related firms to expand or locate in the area.

Philadelphia and its suburbs have about a dozen data centers, including in Center City and at the Navy Yard.

With their towering stacks of servers, utilitarian architecture, and relatively small workforces, the centers generally create less traffic in their neighborhoods than warehouses, office buildings, or retail facilities of similar size. Unlike large residential developments, they don’t directly add to public school enrollments, either.

But Loudoun County, Va., home of what’s widely regarded as the greatest concentration of data centers on the planet, last year approved guidelines to limit their growth. And the East and West Whiteland proposals have sparked concerns among environmentalists and some residents in northeastern Chester County, where rolling hills, winding roads, and quaint stone buildings belie the sometimes toxic legacy of mining, steelmaking, and other heavy industries that once dotted the landscape.

“We have a real industrial heritage here,” said Zachary Barner, East Whiteland’s director of planning and development. “We have some challenging sites. And one of the challenges is not only to clean up and make them safe but to return them to productive use.”

East Whiteland has been described as among the fastest-growing municipalities in the state. Development pressures, as well as the presence of 600 linear miles of pipelines within the county’s borders, contribute to public wariness about data centers.

“I’m not against responsible development,” said East Whiteland resident Carla Zambelli Mudry. “But when you’re talking about new kinds of technology and new kinds of factories, basically, you need the most updated [municipal] codes available, and our current codes are out of date.”

Noting that the impact of lithium processing on the environment and public health became clear long after damage had been done, she said: “We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

Sometimes called server farms or carrier hotels, data centers are nothing new. But what’s proposed for East Whiteland would be significantly bigger than most.

The center would use more energy during periods of peak demand from its customers than any other single location in Peco’s service territory, said Phil Eastman, the regional utility’s senior manager for economic development.

“The site is literally adjacent to the Planebrook substation at Routes 202 and 30,” Eastman said. “It’s a major substation, and our analysis shows it has ample capacity.

“The bottom line is the surrounding customers will not see any impact on their service due to this project.”

The proposed East Whiteland data center location once was home to a limestone mining and later, lithium ore-processing business called the Foote Mineral Co., which closed in 1991. A Superfund cleanup project there was substantially completed in 2010, although monitoring of several locations on the property is continuing.

Although an 800-unit continuing care retirement community was proposed for a portion of the site about 12 years ago, in 2017 then-Gov. Tom Wolf announced a program to fund site preparation work at six locations statewide. Pennsylvania provided a $4 million grant and a $6 million loan to spur data center development on the East Whiteland property.

And in 2021, the state legislature approved a measure to exempt sales and use taxes on equipment to outfit data centers that meet certain employment and other economic development goals.

“These tax abatements are one of the most favorable among programs like this in the country,” Lyddane said.

In West Whiteland, nearly 250 people have joined a “Protect Exton Park from Power Plant/Data Center Hub” page on Facebook since it was established earlier in this month. The popular recreation area is close to where Lyddane has explored building a second data center and a power plant.

A 700-acre expanse of woodlands, ponds, and open space, Exton Park was established 30 years ago after local residents fought fiercely to prevent construction of a large housing development, said Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, the administrator of the Facebook page.

“The zoning amendment Charlie requested is very open-ended and would open the door to [development of] hyper-scaled data centers in West Whiteland,” said Marcille-Kerslake, the Eastern Pennsylvania organizer for the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch.

“If Charlie had come to the township with a plan, sketches, and impact statements and said he wanted to just put up a 100,000-square-foot data center ... I don’t think there would be widespread public opposition,” she said.

“But this power plant, especially, is a whole different kettle of fish.”

Lyddane, who gave a tour of his East Whiteland site on Jan. 5, said his proposed hydrogen power generation facility would have offered data center customers a sustainable energy option. He and Marcille-Kerslake strongly disagreed about whether the plant he described would provide “green” power.

As for the future of the West Whiteland property, which includes a storm-water management area that would serve the East Whiteland data center, the developer said: “We don’t have a plan yet. We’re not sure if we’re going to do anything there.”

As of Tuesday, West Whiteland’s Board of Supervisors was still scheduled to hold a public hearing Jan. 25 on Lyddane’s request to have the township’s zoning code amended to permit data centers and power plants in areas zoned for offices and commercial laboratories.