We recently attended a planning commission meeting in Whitemarsh Township that involved a review of a draft ordinance to regulate data centers. The draft would allow data centers by conditional use within six of the township’s zoning districts. Pennsylvania state law prohibits municipalities from banning a legal land use, and Montgomery County, in collaboration with Chester County, developed a model data center ordinance for municipalities to utilize when drafting their own. Whitemarsh Township used the county’s model ordinance, along with another from PennFuture, to develop the regulations.
During the meeting, we kept thinking about Plymouth Township and the proposed almost two-million-square-foot data center for the former steel plant in the Conshohocken section of the township.
When the review focused on distances from sensitive places like community centers, residences, schools, pre-schools, etc, we couldn’t help but compare how Whitemarsh’s draft ordinance would impact the data center application in Plymouth Township (if a similar ordinance had been adopted)…