Senior Environmental Specialist

Proposed Plymouth Township data center zoning application withdrawn. 'They've withdrawn the application and this application will not proceed any further,' says Plymouth Township Zoning Officer Joel Rowe. PLYMOUTH MEETING - An application seeking zoning relief for a proposed data center in Plymouth Township was withdrawn Monday night. Attorney Edmund J. Campbell shared the development to a packed room in the early stages of Monday night's Plymouth Township Zoning Hearing Board meeting. "They've withdrawn the application and this application will not proceed any further," Plymouth Township Zoning Officer Joel Rowe told MediaNews Group after the meeting adjourned. More than 100 people were in attendance at Monday's meeting. The project proposed transforming roughly 66 acres of the old Cleveland-Cliffs plate finishing site at 900 Conshohocken Road into a data center. Developer Brian O'Neill, of MLP Ventures, had proposed retrofitting 10 buildings on the property, around 2 million square feet, and constructing a second floor inside. Ancillary generators and turbines would also be on the property, which is currently zoned as heavy industrial. It was denied a special exemption by township planning members back in September. Residents during the Sept. 19 planning agency meeting maintained a data center would be detrimental to the area, as they vocalized a number of concerns, ranging from environmental to nuisance-related. "My biggest opposition to this is that this is not in the township's strategic plan. This was never intended to remain in industrial space. It is next to a high density residential area, and having heavy industrial next to high density residential was a mistake, and it is a mistake that does not need to be continued," Plymouth Township resident Patti Smith told MediaNews Group. Data centers provide a physical location for information technology infrastructure operations, "running and delivering applications and services," according to IBM, while also managing and storing data. There were 5,426 facilities operating in the U.S. as of March 2025, according to Statista. This isn't the first local proposal for a data center. In East Vincent Township, Chester County, a Sept. 10 town hall meeting featured plans for the former Pennhurst site that included a data center and tire-burning plant. The planning commission opposed it, and area residents lambasted township supervisors for considering it. However, the application to amend the township zoning ordinance is continuing. In neighboring East Coventry Township, the operator of the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant, Constellation Energy, has purchased five parcels of land and requested the township to consider an ordinance allowing data centers. A meeting room inside the Plymouth Township building is filled on Nov. 17, 2025 as the Plymouth Township Zoning Hearing Board hears an item seeking a special exemption for a proposed data center. (Rachel Ravina - MediaNews Group) Opposition in Plymouth grows. Interest has grown in recent months, as area residents attended community meetings with O'Neill to discuss the project. Nick Liermann, of Plymouth Township, insisted "people attended, asked their questions and there were no minds changed" in relation to their opposition. The meeting room inside the Plymouth Township administration building was standing room only on Monday. People lined the walls as chairs were filled in the main and overflow rooms. "I'm also just actually really happy that everyone did show up tonight, because I think this is the silver lining... is that this community has come together in a way that I didn't even think possible," Smith said. As proceedings related to the case got underway, Zoning Hearing Board Solicitor David Sander went over the ground rules for the case and "parties" were established. Campbell had initially requested the matter be postponed until the township's next zoning meeting in December. "Everyone knew this was happening. To wait for all these people from the community to come, taking time out of their evening to show up, appear and express their opinions, and to now ask for a continuance feels disingenuous, especially when it's not based on any new information or any changes to what was presented before," Liermann said. Heather Fine, an attorney representing the property owner, Cleveland-Cliffs Plate Inc., countered "there is no standing for the prospective buyer to proceed with the application this evening, that that authority was not extended to the prospective buyer from the owner." "There is no LOI in place. So as far as the... owners of the property [are] concerned, there's no authority or standing for this hearing to go forward," Fine said. Campbell insisted that O'Neill "delivered a signed agreement of sale to the owner this evening," but Fine said that document "had red line changes" that "have not been accepted by my client." "I don't think we have a choice but to continue the matter, because right now we have a technical legal issue between the applicant and the owner of the property as to whether the applicant has a legal standing to proceed," Sander said. Zoning Hearing Board members went into a lengthy executive session, and adjourned shortly after Campbell said the application had been withdrawn. O'Neill was not present on Monday. "I think it was inappropriate for the developer to come before this panel and essentially waste the community's time," Smith told MediaNews Group. It's unclear whether O'Neill will move forward, but Smith said she and others will continue speaking out in opposition against the data center. "I think we're going to keep going with this... with the trend that everyone wants data centers now, I don't think that this is the end of this," she said. "But we're going to keep organizing the community so that they get all the information they need." RevContent feed.

In 2023, Helion announced the world's first power purchase agreement (PPA) that will provide energy from the plant to Microsoft by 2028, with Constellation Energy serving as power marketer.