LebTown Exclusive: S. Annville Twp. data center developer reveals project details

The developer of a proposed $1.7 billion data center in South Annville Township shared his tentative project plans Tuesday during a visit with LebTown at the 99-acre site.

During its exclusive interview, LebTown asked Joe Eisenhauer, vice president of development for Inch & Co. about the project details, which are in the very early stages and will take between three and four years to complete, if approved. He said the land is under contract but the sale has not been finalized. Zoning changes are currently being pursued by 1235 Martina Drive Owner LLC, a joint venture between Inch & Co. and Eastern Land & Resources Company, the property’s current owner.

LebTown met with Eisenhauer on Tuesday morning, about 10 hours before a public meeting of the South Annville Township Planning Commission. An estimated 60 to 70 people attended that meeting and all who spoke voiced opposition to the proposed data center. 

Why a data center there?

The first question was why a data center at that location, which is on land immediately behind 911 Rapid Response and adjacent to Mount Pleasant Road along U.S. Route 422.  

“I think data centers are probably a decade away from being considered vital infrastructure because of the necessity that we have for them as computing and cloud usage and as AI (artificial intelligence) expands,” Eisenhauer said. “So everybody that stores anything on a Google Drive or Apple iCloud, that all goes somewhere. And that somewhere is that they go to data centers. Data centers at their core are essentially a warehouse filled with computer servers.” 

He noted a misnomer about them.

“People think a data center is like a bunch of tech people working on things and, you know, tapping away on computers. It’s not. It’s just corridor upon corridor upon corridor of computer servers. So they don’t necessarily need to be in proximity to population centers, but it is advantageous for them to be localized where you have a population,” Eisenhauer said. “Here in Pennsylvania, we have access from a distribution perspective. It’s ideal. That’s why you see so many warehouses. Because we have access to like a third of the population of the country right here.”

There’s another reason he said they’re ideal to be constructed in the commonwealth beyond geographical proximity to population centers.

“Nationwide, Pennsylvania is being targeted for data centers because of historic infrastructure that exists back to Bethlehem Steel and manufacturing. The rust belt aspect of it is actually an attractive aspect for data center development because power, water, gas, all the major infrastructure that exists, has just been kind of dormant,” he added.

Although Eisenhauer noted numerous times that this project is in the concept stages, meaning there aren’t land development plans and other designs, he did share the conceptual goal of the project, including that multiple centers encompassing about 750,000 square feet will be constructed.

If constructed, the data center complex would be dwarfed by DHL’s nearby Clear Spring Logistics Park. Later this year, DHL is slated to open the first of three warehouses in an overall 3 million square feet of space approved for the multi-national logistics company. Facilities already constructed by The Hershey Company and NorthPoint Development add another two million square feet to the industrial park situated on former MFS land, with an additional half million square feet of expansion approved between the two companies.

“The concept I have here, and it’s just a concept because we still have to do all the development and survey work, is five buildings, each one about 150,000 square feet. And they have to be built in a certain way that they can accommodate the equipment on the roof, around the grounds, you know, the blower fans, chillers, and generators,” he said. 

Realigning Mount Pleasant Road

Eisenhauer said that one stipulation from the township for the project, if approved, is to reconfigure the existing adjacent access road on the west side of Mount Pleasant Road and to the east of 911 Rapid Response. 

Although the access road currently dead ends at the property line, the newly constructed roadway will run southeast until it reconnects with Mount Pleasant Road at the southeast corner of the property. 

“That (current portion of Mount Pleasant Road) is going to get shut down because it’s unsafe anyway. The township doesn’t like it, the county doesn’t like it, I don’t think PennDOT likes it. So this is going to be like a PennDOT exercise, on my part, to build a new road,” Eisenhauer said. 

Rezoning request

That is one of three requested requirements coming from the township for the property, which is in an area currently zoned I-1 (industrial) and C-1 (commercial). A total of 15 acres currently zoned industrial will be converted to agricultural to protect an eagle nest located in the southwest corner of the property and to offset 13 acres being rezoned from agricultural to industrial for the project. 

“The township has told the underlying property owner, whose name is Tom Zagami… that ‘we don’t want any more trucks, we don’t want any more students in the schools and we want Mount Pleasant Road realigned,’” Eisenhauer said. (Zagami is an attorney who oversees the property for MFS, Inc. d/b/a Eastern Land & Resources Company.)

LebTown asked him what township officials meant concerning the no students comment.

“Because there’s been so much residential growth throughout South Annville. I mean, they’ve probably added a thousand students. A thousand new homes, not a thousand students. Basically what they’re saying is they don’t want this to become – even though I think a lot of the ground is currently (commercial), they don’t want it to become (residential) and put in homes. And they didn’t want (commercial) development either because they don’t want the traffic that comes with a shopping center.”

Eisenhauer said he hasn’t yet thought through whether the project could still proceed if the requested zoning changes fail to receive approval by township supervisors.

The project

The five buildings will be built on the south side of the property and west side of the proposed new Mount Pleasant Road. 

“All the development data center work is going to be south. So I was looking at the other day from the nearest building that I have conceived, it’s almost 800 feet down to (U.S. Route) 422,” Eisenhauer said. “Everything on the data center side is going to be behind a berm, a landscaped berm with trees on top, and behind an 8-foot-high fence. It’s gonna have gate-to-gate entrances.”

Eisenhauer said the landscaped berm will rise to between 8- and 10-feet-high to screen the buildings and help reduce sound, which he said will emit between 45 and 55 decibels.

Minimizing noise

“Just for perspective, that is about 60 decibels,” Eisenhauer said while pointing towards traffic on U.S. Route 422. “So it’s the same as the sound from the highway. The township has standards in the zoning ordinance that require that you meet a certain decibel level at the property line. I think their standard is 72. So we’re going to be well below that.”

There are other noise-reduction considerations as well.

“A lot of the equipment that produces the noise is going to be on the roof of these buildings. And these buildings are going to be 50-feet-high to the roof line. And then there’s going to be a 10- foot-high concrete parapet wall that sticks up… . Everything that makes noise is going to be inside that 10-foot parapet wall.”

He said that’s part of what he called sound attenuation.

“Everything’s just going to go up and then it just disperses into the sky. But furthermore, again, the berm, the fact that the things that make the most noise are generators whenever they kick on. And they only kick in in the event of a power failure or for testing once a month. The township in the ordinance that we’ve put forth has requested that we limit the testing hours to daytime hours.” 

Water usage

One issue that draws criticism towards the construction of data centers is the amount of water used to cool the computers that are built to run 24/7/365. LebTown asked and followed up with Eisenhauer about the volume of water used daily.

He wrote in a text message that: “Less than a typical office building. Our basis of design uses a closed loop chilled water system with air-cooled chillers. The only water we plan to use is for landscaping, kitchens, bathrooms, and the fire sprinklers.”

Eisenhauer also highlighted the potential water sources. 

“The water will come from a public system, which is Pennsylvania American Water. We’re not taking it out of the (nearby Quittapahilla) creek. We’re not taking it out of the ground, so no one’s wells are going to be impacted by this. We’ve already engaged with PA Water on the ability to serve this building,” Eisenhauer said. “PA Water has asked that we build a loop system, a redundant loop system that actually increases water capacity elsewhere and it helps fire protection, it helps everybody to build this loop system, so we’ve agreed to build a loop.”

There’s another option being pursued concerning water use.

“The latest thing that I’m pursuing is actually tapping into the (nearby) sewage treatment plant and using their effluent discharge for the highest volume water needs because the highest volume of water is when we fill all the closed loop systems inside the buildings,” Eisenhauer said. 

The affluent helps fill a need while preserving water for other uses.

“It’s not water that anybody drinks. It’s not water that anybody has to even touch. It goes into a pipe system and that’s where it lives until we drain it and fill it back up. So we can use what the industry calls purple water, which is the effluent,” added Eisenhauer, who said the plan is to use about 100,000 gallons of the estimated 700,000 gallons generated daily by the sewer plant.

Electrical needs

One of the items still to be addressed is how to provide electricity to the data centers through Met-Ed, who provides electricity locally via the PJM Interconnection LLC, which is a regional transmission organization in the United States serving all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. 

“Every one of those is going to make our electric rates go up. The only upside is can you source one (data center) in your township to get the tax benefit out of it?” he stated. “When I say electric rates are going up, they’re going up because of everything, they’re not going up specifically because of this. They’re going up because of all the data centers that happen anywhere in the 13 state (PJM) region.”

Eisenhauer noted those states include large population centers like Chicago, Cincinnati, New York City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. 

“They are locations that are already years ahead of us from a data center perspective,” Eisenhauer said. “My concern, just as someone who has family that still lives here and who considers this my home, is that if we don’t do it now, we might get skipped over entirely. So the upside to working on getting this done is that we can do it in a way that minimizes the impacts it generates while providing tremendous value.”

Eisenhauer said there will be a substation constructed east of 911 Rapid Response and west of Mount Pleasant Road. The substation will be enclosed behind a gated fence.

As part of the project, a load study concerning electrical use will have to occur and take what Eisenhauer said will take from six months to a year.

Timeline for substation construction is tentative. Nearby the opening of the first building at DHL’s Clear Spring Logistics Park had been held up by construction of another new Met-Ed substation, which opened last year. Load study delays have also stalled development of the western expansion of North Cornwall Commons in North Cornwall Township.

Projected tax benefits

Eisenhauser said a benefit is the tax revenue the data centers will generate for the Annville-Cleona School District (ACSD), Lebanon County and South Annville Township.

Based on the school district’s current millage rate of 18.104 mills, the county’s 4.5925 rate, and the township’s 1 mill, the project would generate annually $13 million for ACSD, $3 million for Lebanon County, and $750,000 for the municipality.

Ted Conley, assistant chief assessor for the Lebanon County Tax Assessment Office, confirmed those are the amounts provided to the county by Inch & Co.’s legal counsel based on a similar project elsewhere.

Conley noted, however, that these figures are only preliminary estimates and that actual figures are unknown since no land development plans have been submitted for the project.

As the source of the estimated tax figures, Eisenhauer wrote in a follow-up text that they “used a cost basis for the improvements. We supplied the tax office with a schedule of values for construction and said, ‘What do you consider taxable’ and they came up with the assessed value.”

Eisenhauer additionally told LebTown that his company is not seeking any forms of tax abatement like a Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance (LERTA) for this project. 

Next steps

Next steps for the project include various approvals through the township’s planning commission, zoning and the township supervisors, the latter who will have their monthly meeting Wednesday, April 8, at 7 p.m. in the Annville-Cleona Secondary School auditorium.